Final Thoughts

Over the course of the day I was glad to see and have control over how much environmental effect my food takes to make. However, it’s not typical for me that I’m cooking every meal I’m eating or am able to see where all my food comes from and how it gets to me. My consciousness that I would be recording how much environmental effects my meals would bring probably also influenced what I decided to eat that day too, and may be lower than usual, and certainly lower than the average person. Which is a little unnerving.

What really astonished me was how much plastic EVERYTHING had. When going throughout the day, and also in creating this blog, a particular line in Rome’s article, “We all live in Plasticville” which was a quote from Susan Freinkel, a journalist, kept coming to mind. The coffee machine, every piece of packaging, the bags I brought from the store, the Tupperware I used for snacks all had plastic in them! Now when I look around the room I see plastic in almost all my belongings, its absurd how much plastic is used in our lives.

 

Dinner

Stir Fry

For dinner I had this stir fry with ground beef, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, noodles, and green onions. I also used some soy sauce and oil to cook it.

There was 100g of beef in this, which came from a Styrofoam package with a saran wrap (plastic) seal.

The peppers came from the same package as those in my brunch, and the broccoli, cauliflower, and green onions were bought from a convenience store down the street, with no packaging as produce, I did use plastic bags to bring them home however.

Noodle package

The noodles were instant noodles from South Korea, so it had to be shipped to Canada for me to get it. It came in plastic packaging, and the spices and olive oil came in plastic packaging too. These are wheat based noodles which is one foods of the lowest carbon emissions.Soy Sauce

While I only used a little bit, the Soy Sauce is from Kikkoman, a Japanese company. I own the 1 liter bottle like shown in the picture and I have only used a little under half since I bought it. Again, its a plastic bottle with a plastic resealable cap. I’ll probably end up recycling this when I’m done with it so it’s nice that the packaging isn’t completely wasteful, and at least it would have served me for a long time.

Snacks

Nuts and Seeds

As an afternoon snack I grabbed some cashews and pumpkin seeds out of the cupboard to keep me going until dinner.

This is a little over 100g of nuts and under the same table I referenced for the brunch post, is 2.3 Kilos of CO2 per kilo of nuts, therefore .29 grams of CO2 on this one as just agricultural costs.

Cashews

Pumpkin Seeds

Upon a quick google search I found that cashews are native to Brazil and are now mainly grown in Africa, India, and Vietnam, all very far away! Looks like pretty much all cashews have to be shipped in from foreign areas, which costs oil to bring to us.

The packaging for these cashews are a plastic cylinder with a screw-able plastic lid, also with a handle, the plastic is thick enough that it is very durable while this type of packaging uses a lot of plastic, its also very reusable! I will be sure to reuse this package for something once I’m done all the cashews.

The pumpkin seeds are packaged in a resealable bag, not as reusable but it at least uses less plastic. I’ll probably end up recycling / throwing this away when I’m done with this however.

Brunch

Brunch; I’m neither a food photographer or chef so please forgive me.

For brunch I made some scrambled eggs with some orange peppers and spinach. Yum.

Upon making this meal I was pleasantly surprised that most of the ingredients I used were produced here in BC, I don’t buy locally (although I probably should) but I guess when fresh produce is involved it usually won’t be brought from too far.

Peppers from Delta, BC

Eggs from Abbotsford, BC

Spinach from Monterey, California.

The Spinach actually came from California, darn. After a quick google search it looks like this is the prime time for our locals to grow spinach too! In this garden.org guide it says here in Kelowna we can be growing spinach from June 25th to August 9th. The farmers here is extremely active too so if I was more careful I surely could have gotten fresher, tastier, locally grown, more environmentally friendly spinach. With no need for shipping.

When it comes to packaging, everything came in plastic except for the eggs, which was packaged in Styrofoam the packaging on the spinach seems especially wasteful, where they created a box with reasonably thick plastic and a resealable mechanism where realistically they could’ve made a resealable bag like the peppers did. It’s even less space efficient!

Upon a quick google search I found greeneatz and their food carbon footprint table. The table includes CO2 kilos per kilo of food. Ranking 4.8 CO2 kilos for eggs and 2.0 CO2 kilos for vegetables. While I didn’t eat a kilo of eggs, the eggs I ate definitely weighed more than the vegetables. So the eggs would have counted as a large majority of the footprint of my meal.

 

Coffee!

My Morning Cup of Joe

If I don’t have anywhere to be I’ll usually make myself a morning cup of coffee (or two) and eventually have my first meal around brunch time.

Did you know that all the coffee can only grow between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of capricorn? Meaning all the coffee from Canada and the US (excluding Hawaii) HAS to be shipped from these areas.

The Coffee Belt

According to a study you can find here: the carbon footprint throughout the whole process of growing and transporting the coffee comes out to 59.12g of CO2 emissions. Assuming the coffee came from Costa Rica (one of the closer places to ship from).

However, this doesn’t include things like plastics used for packaging, or energy used to brew the coffee, or the manufacturing of the parts that go to brewing the coffee.

Just like how Rome’s “Crude Reality” features how “we are surrounded by plastic.” I noticed that the Keurig machine and reusable K-cup I used was made of plastic, and the packaging for my coffee grounds had plastic too!

My (largely plastic) Coffee Machine and Coffee Ground packaging

The Oil We Eat.

Back on Sunday, July 8th, I had no plans and decided to stay home, I figured this was a good day to blog my food consumption where I could better record things like the food packaging, and where my food was shipped from.

 

Okanagan Lake, Photo credits to Boating Kelowna.