It is commonly asserted that a piece of produce has traveled an average of 1500 miles from the field to your fork. (There are a couple of links to these discussion below) The positive side of that is that we are able to enjoy fruits and vegetables that we would not otherwise know, and to have access to our favorites during its off season. Our year round consumption of this fresh produce improves our health, but perhaps not the health of the planet. I have not been able to find a consensus estimate of what that transportation is when converted to CO2, because of the complexities in our transportation systems. Suffice it to say that transportation of produce is a significant source of CO2 emissions. One interesting statistic I saw was that it took 36 times as much fossil fuel energy to ship a head of lettuce from the Salinas Valley in California to the Senate dining room in Washington as the food energy available from the lettuce. A bogus comparison perhaps, but the message is clear.
One way to cut the CO2 from this transportation in half is for everyone to have the Ethylene Gas Guardian in their refrigerator. Proper ethylene control in the home will double the storage life of post purchase produce. It makes no sense to ship twice as much produce as needed, if half of it ends up in a land fill due to improper storage. So, the E.G.G. not only saves money, keeps your produce tastier and more nutritious, but it helps reduce our impact on the amount of CO2 created in its transportation.
I doubt that my issue with the CO2 I was generating and the frustration that was building while I was sitting in California traffic was included in any of these calculations.
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/food_travel072103.pdf
http://www.foodshare.net/resource/files/ACF230.pdf
Tags: carbon dioxide, CO2, food miles, green house gas reduction, produce shipping
