Sometimes I feel like Sherlock Holmes

I think other people at my supermarket think I’m a little bit strange: my muttering over the product labels is starting to attract stares! Do you do the label examination too? It goes a bit like this:

Step 1: pick up an item I might want to buy
Step 2: look for label – is it on the back, on a tag, on the bottom?
Step 3: squint at the fine-print, wonder if I need glasses
Step 4: ask the usual questions – is this organic? where’s it made? is it fair-trade? what are these weird ingredients? are they GM? are they toxic? I can’t even pronounce this one!
Step 5: put item back on the shelf
Step 6: pick up competing item, repeat from Step 2 until I either find a good product, or give up.

I want to buy food that’s good for the environment, or at least, not bad for it. But that means researching how things were made, who made them, what’s in them, what they’re wrapped in, if the wrapping is recyclable, and a bunch of other things. That ain’t easy on a Saturday morning shop, when it’s crowded and dozens of other people want to get to the same shelf, and I just want to get home in time to watch the footy.

Once I find a product I like, one that’s ethical or environmentally-friendly, I am so loyal you couldn’t pay me to change. This is partly because I think businesses who make an effort to reduce their eco-footprint deserve to be rewarded; and partly because I’m so damn tired of checking labels that I don’t want the hassle of doing it too often!

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to cut back on the hassle by using ethical shopping guides. These are made by organisations who have already put on their Sherlock Holmes hat and investigated the product details, and then write them up for us to use.

So far, I’ve found the AMCS Sustainable Seafood Guide and the Good Grocery Guide, a Perth-based shopping guide that lists Australian, organic, fair-trade and non-GMO products. I keep them in my handbag and whip them out when I spot a new product or food I want to try.

If you want to do the same, do look into the credentials of the group who write the guide: not everyone has the same idea of what’s environmentally-friendly, so you want to make sure that their decisions are a reasonable match to your own. But once you’ve picked your guide, you can save yourself a lot of research time, and can give up being a detective.

Do you know of any other guides like this? Let us all know in the comments if you recommend them!

National Tree Day

Yesterday, Dave and I braved the rainy weather to show up at our local council’s National Tree Day event, which is run by Planet Ark. There were about 35 people aged 6 to 60-ish; plus a troop of scouts, a few people from Planet Ark to keep us organised, and about a million enormous mosquitoes. I had no idea that mozzies came out in the rain, but there you go. We got a bit wet and muddy, but it was good fun.

If I heard the supervisor correctly, our group planted about 3000 melaleuca trees, also known as paperbarks. This is part of an on-going revegetation project, and we could see the work done on previous Tree Days: there were already a lot of casuarinas and paperbarks in the area, which had been planted 4 years ago. The supervisor told us that the area had been cleared for farmland decades ago, then just left alone more recently. It’s now been rezoned to parkland, and they’ve been getting more wildlife back in the last few years.

The planting area had already been covered in mulch, but some parts of it were more like a pond due to the (wonderful) amount of rain we’ve had over the last few days. We were told how to plant: 3m apart, make a hole in the ground using a stake or a trowel, put your sapling in, move on. It couldn’t have been easier! Trowels, stakes, gloves and Aeroguard were provided. Dave and I borrowed some wellies and waded out into the flooded part to look for mounds of mulch we could plant in.

Afterwards there was a sausage sizzle, but we had to get going. I had fun clomping around in boots, and will definitely be back next year to see how my saplings are going, and plant a few more.

So, what is organic food anyway?

I’ve mentioned ‘organic’ a lot here before, and everywhere you look you can see it on labels in the shops. But what does it mean, and how important is it when you’re choosing what to eat?

Organic means food that have been grown without pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers, and have been processed without food additives (if they need any processing at all). If the word is applied to meat or dairy products, it means that the animals involved have been fed organic food, and have not been given antibiotics or growth hormones. The Wikipedia entry on organic food is quite good.

There are many environmental benefits to growing crops and raising animals this way:

• it reduces pollution: organic farms don’t release pesticides and herbicides into our soil and waterways, where they can harm animals (including us!) or accumulate over the years.
• it creates healthier eco-systems, as organic farming methods allow a more diverse population of insects, small animals, and non-crop plants, when compared to the monoculture you get when you spray chemicals intended to kill any plants and animals except the crop.
• it’s a less energy-intensive method, with less need for processing and packaging for chemicals.
• it reduces our reliance on fossil-fuels by using natural fertilisers, since artificial fertilisers are petroleum-based.

The jury still seems to be out on whether there are any health benefits to eating organic food. It’s the kind of research that will take decades, as we wait to see long-term effects on people, but so far the results look good. A large study by the European Union showed that organic foods had larger quantities of anti-oxidants and other micro-nutrients. Personally, I prefer to reduce the amount of pesticides going into my body wherever possible, and eating organic food helps me do just that.

Do be careful though, when you’re buying organic. As far as I can tell, there’s no rule that says companies can’t put the word ‘organic’ on any product they like, or make up their own official-looking logos. Your best bet for avoiding greenwash here is to look for one of the “certified organic” marks listed in this Choice article, and then stick to brands that you know and trust. If you’re looking at a small business, who maybe can’t afford certification, why not try to contact the owner about what they do? If they’re making an effort to be environmentally-friendly, they should be happy to explain their methods to you.

Even if a product is certified organic, there’s no guarantee that it doesn’t cause other environmental problems: it might be over-packaged, from overseas, or out of season if it’s fresh food. I included ‘eat organic’ in my 6 ways to choose eco-friendly food post, but it’s not the only factor to consider. And as we all know, buyer beware!

Overall, though, the benefit to the environment makes it worth your while to find the organic products available at your shopping centre. If you’re on a limited budget, you might have to be choosier about which organic foods you buy – check out Umbra’s advice on prioritizing organic purchases at Grist.org. I keep finding new ones all the time, and in my opinion most of them are fantastically good stuff, often produced locally by small businesses. The choice of fresh organic vegies at my supermarket is growing, and some of our independent butchers are offering organic meats lately too.

Are you wearing a jumper?

It’s winter: have you got a jumper on? Or a scarf? Maybe a warm hat? If not, why not? Maybe you’re like my father-in-law, who has the amazing ability to wear shorts and sandals in winter and not feel the cold at all. But most of us need to be a bit more covered up once the temperature dips down.

Rugging up in cold weather is a great way to help the environment: it means that you don’t have to heat your house or office as much. The recommended temperature for buildings in winter is between 18 and 21 degrees Celsius – but most places are heated to about 24 degrees, or even warmer. Every increase of 1 degree can cost up to 10% more on your electricity or gas bill; and obviously the more electricity and gas we use, the more greenhouse gas emissions we’re creating. You can see more about how to manage your winter heating at the Synergy website. They suggest that you heat your home just enough to take the chill off the air.

Putting on a jumper and turning down the heat is one of the easiest things you could possibly do to help the environment. Keep in mind that it’s important to keep your extremities warm too: you lose the most heat through your head, hands and feet, so make sure you’ve got a way to keep them covered too.

One of my favourite things about winter is the chance to wear warm woolly clothing. Knitting is one of my hobbies, and today I’m wearing a red lacy scarf I made myself. I don’t like wearing gloves or mittens, but I’m thinking I might knit some long socks next, to go under my boots. A friend of mine uses a lap rug when watching tv at home. What’s your favourite way to keep warm in winter?

Rudd’s ETS Green Paper: what do you think?

For the last two days, I’ve been struggling over what to write about the Rudd government’s Green Paper on how they’re going to tackle climate change. I’ve got very conflicting feelings about it!

Pros:

• Well, it’s better than nothing. No, seriously, I’d rather have this emissions trading scheme than nothing at all. It should at least slow emissions instead of letting them accelerate.
• They’re not giving away money to the nuclear power industry.
• All industries except agriculture have been included.

Cons:

• 1/3 of permits to be given away for free? What’s the point of putting a price on pollution if you’re going to let some corporations do it for free? And the freebies are for the worst polluters, not the cleanest: the second-worst polluters would have an incentive to increase their emissions so they could get the freebies too.
• It relies so heavily on clean coal. They are really banking on this technology being able to save us. What if they’re wrong? We’ll have spent billions of dollars on sequestration research for no benefit at all, when we could’ve spent that money on (already working) renewables technology or public transport.
• Agriculture is still in the “too hard” basket.

Other commentary is available online from:

The Greens’ Senator Milne
“…the Government has put its foot on the brake and accelerator at the same time.”

Bernard Keane at Crikey
“Labor was elected, in part, because of its commitment to getting serious about climate change. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Ben Eltham at New Matilda
“At least making big carbon exporters pay permits would distribute some of their vast wealth back to the public. Instead we’re actually subsidising them.”

Still, it’s only a Green Paper for discussion, not legislation up for vote in the Senate. It seems that the corporations have already had their input into the policy, so now it’s our turn. We have to put pressure on the government to do the right thing: no freebies for polluters. They’ve had long enough to figure out which way the (increasingly hot and dry) wind was blowing; they should have been better prepared. If they want to emit greenhouse gases, they’ve got to pay the rest of us for the damage it will cause, instead of coasting along as if they had nothing to do with it.

It looks like the Rudd government is going to go with the weakest emissions trading scheme they can get away with. So what do you think about it? What action can we take to improve on this before it becomes actual policy? How can we let them know that the bare minimum isn’t good enough?