8 Hints To Reduce Your Food Footprint – CleanTechnica

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We’re human, and our bodies need fuel. To eat means we create a food footprint, and there’s an environmental cost to the foods we choose. Yet each of us can reduce our food impacts by being mindful of what we eat, how those items are produced, and why it’s important to think innovatively about sustenance.

Each step of the food system — growing, processing, packaging, transporting, refrigerating, cooking, and disposing — uses energy and emits greenhouse gases. The UN Sustainable Development Group argues that our food systems today “are a major contributor to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution,” so, as a result, “our food systems require an urgent transformational shift.”

The world’s food systems account for nearly 30% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Too many people are generally unaware that food contributes to GHG emissions, much less what foods are responsible for driving emissions.

Want to learn more? You can make food decisions today that change your food footprint. Below are eight ways you can reduce your food footprint so it’s more environmentally food-friendly.

Limit ultra-processed foods. When it comes to carbohydrates and fresh produce, it seems to make sense that, if a choice is better for your health, it is probably better for the planet. A study of 60,000 grocery shelf products found that switching to lower-emission options within similar categories could bring food footprints down by an impressive 71%.

Choose fresh fruits and vegetables to snack on rather than processed cookies, crackers, or chips. It’s becoming a trend — food giants are watching small, nimble companies that make healthier food and beverages gain consumers’ attention through social media and other direct marketing campaigns.

And wouldn’t you know it? Just when I was preening about my home-cooked meals over pre-packaged, easier-to-prepare foods, my research pointed out that I still have a ways to go. I learned that coffee and chocolate are two culprits that contribute to my carbon footprint. It’s time to rethink those favs.

Curb waste. Cook with intent so that your kitchen doesn’t become one of the causalities of food waste — which accounts for more than a third of all household waste. Make sure to rotate your refrigerated items so the newest purchases are in the back. Study your leftovers, as they can be integral elements in upcoming meals. Plan menus ahead so that you’re using the oldest ingredients first — often, this encourages creative and delicious repasts that you might not have otherwise thought to cook.

Eat a primarily plant-based diet. The vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants in plants help keep your cells healthy and your body in balance so that your immune system can function at its best. The environment needs you to eat more plants, too — meat and dairy production uses 83% of farmland and causes 60% of agriculture’s GHG emissions, but provides only 18% of calories and 37% of protein.

Many consumers exploring plant-based options are looking for foods that mimic the flavors they’re already used to, such as meat and dairy. A 2023 study suggests that making simple dietary swaps could reduce the carbon footprint in the US by more than 35%, along with improving overall diet quality. The researchers identified simple swaps that people could make from high-carbon food sources to lower carbon food sources, such as replacing a beef burger with a turkey burger, with no other changes to the diet. These changes would improve overall dietary quality by 4–10%. If you think going vegan is too big an ask, simpler, periodic substitutions may be easier for you to implement.

Buy local. Try to find out how your food traveled from farm to fork. Buying local keeps money in the local economy, preserves family farms, reduces oil-dependent transportation costs, protects our local landscapes, and ensures that fresh, healthy food stays available and affordable to all. New England’s Food Connect advocacy group explains that, in the contemporary long-haul agricultural system, plant varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen uniformly, withstand harvesting, survive packing, and last a long time on the shelf. That means there is limited genetic diversity in large-scale production. Smaller local farms, in contrast, often grow many different varieties of crops to provide a long harvest season, the best flavors, and the healthiest choices from pollinators in our geographic area.

Zohran Mamdani, who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary last month, wants to open a network of city-owned grocery stores. They’d offer lower food prices than might otherwise be available in the city. If enacted, food deserts in the area would be replaced by residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options — especially fresh fruits and vegetables — within convenient traveling distance.

Compost your food scraps. Composting has many benefits for the climate, ecosystems, and communities. The composting process creates nutrient-rich soil that reduces erosion and stormwater pollution and sequesters carbon. Compost promotes higher yields of agricultural crops. It can help aid reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by improving contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils. Compost can be used to remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste in a cost-effective manner. Compost enhances water retention in soils.

By composting wasted food and other organics, you’ll reduce methane emissions and the need for chemical fertilizers. You can do it!

Avoid plastic food packaging. Single-use plastics are harmful for the environment, as their waste cycle moves them all-too-often to rivers and oceans.Because they’re not biodegradable, plastic bags continue to pollute the environment with harmful microplastics for hundreds of years after use. Plastic bags are among the top five deadliest forms of ocean plastic pollution.

I must’ve skipped school the day they taught us that plastic comes from fossil fuels — or maybe they didn’t include that salient fact as part of our science curriculum. Nonetheless, it’s best to buy individual food items that haven’t been packaged or to buy in bulk.

Lose that precious six-burner gas stove. I know, I know — gas cooking is responsive. You can adjust the temperature easily and precisely. Nonetheless, gas stoves burn natural gas, which generates a number of invisible by-products. The biggest concern for human health is nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is produced when natural gas is burned at high temperatures in the presence of nitrogen in the atmosphere. NO2 has many harmful effects on respiratory health.

Your time has come. Ask a neighbor to model for you what it’s like to cook on an induction stove — you may never look longingly at gas burners again.

Call out Big Ag for its polluting practices. Firms operating in the global agri-food sector — the world’s biggest emitter after fossil fuels —  need to take responsibility for their full supply chain. Their first priority has to be to sell low-carbon products, but they won’t jeopardize their profitability unless they see sales tumbling. That’s where your advocacy comes in. Fight for projects that improve water availability. Push for investments in climate-resilient crops. Support for clean energy projects that power small and large farms.

The food industry needs to become more inclusive and climate smart by embracing circular business models. Companies that do so find that they’re a lot more fair, environmentally sound, and good for human health.