[/caption]I got a bit of inspiration for my list from this piece on the Guardian site. But I'm pretty sceptical about the article in general, particularly the estimates about how much CO2 you will save through particular actions. It seems to me that the actions suggested are a mix of genuine and fairly verifiable carbon-saving measures and more amorphous bits of contemporary middle-class do-goodism that don't have any real effect on emissions, and may in fact increase them.
One quick example: they reckon you can save 200 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through "never buying ready meals or processed food". Now I'm sure that lots of people consider this a laudable ambition on a par with eating only organic and knitting your own yoghurt; and I really don't know enough about food production to say for certain that it's not true; but intuitively it seems completely backwards.
Take processed foods. Which is more energy-efficient, a glass of freshly-squeezed pineapple juice, or a glass of the processed stuff? Assuming the fruit are all from the same source, the energy-efficiency basically comes down to packaging, processing, transport, and wastage.
- There's probably more packaging in the processed variety, because whereas both will probably be moved around in wooden pallets and cardboard crates, the processed juice will be in a can or bottle which can be recycled but will still cost some energy.
- As far as processing is concerned, the pre-processed juice is likely to be more energy efficient. For the pineapple-processor, energy is likely to be the second-biggest cost after labour, and so if they're smart they will be making efforts to reduce it. They will be processing on a mass scale, rather than using an inefficient home juicer that you switch on once a week. Commercial fruit-processing machines these days are no doubt marketed with rising energy and carbon prices in mind.
- For transport, the pre-processed juice is way out in front. My rough guess would be that a kilo of pineapples yields about 400g of juice. Add say 100g for a can or bottle and you're still carting only half as much mass around for the same quantity of juice in your breakfast glass. Kate grew up in pineapple country in Queensland and they process that stuff right next to the farms. So essentially, juicing a kilo of unprocessed Sunshine Coast pineapple in Sydney involves transporting 500g of waste material for 1,000km before sending it to landfill or for composting in another farming area outside the city.
- Wastage is the other factor. Canned pineapple juice lasts for at least a year without additives or preservatives, and more or less every pineapple grown on the farm goes into some part of the production line. Whereas the fresh variety will involve wastage at the wholesale, retail, and domestic stages, when someone over-orders, old pineapples go off, a crate gets knocked on the ground etc. There are probably cases where there's simply massive oversupply and whole acres of crop are just ploughed into fertiliser because they can't get a worthwhile price; but the existence of a flexible processing industry probably reduces the likelihood of this happening, by providing a safety-valve and letting farmers arbitrage between current low prices and future prices.
Anyway, this is getting a very long post but you get the idea. The same principles probably apply to ready meals to an even greater extent.
I love home-cooking but coming up with spurious arguments to make people feel morally superior about doing it bores me. Processed food may not always be as tasty as the home-made variety but it's often as good as any available alternative and I would be prepared to bet that, more often than not, it's more energy-efficient. The fact that we can afford to eat non-local, non-seasonal produce in an unprocessed form at all these days is a sign of how low energy costs are for most people in developed countries.
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