When calculating my footprint, I was shocked to find out that my "food footprint" was higher than the average Canadian. I generally purchase organic fruits and veggies, infrequently get fruits which are not in season locally, and have kept many local foods such as local eggs in my daily diet. The website does provide you with information as to how to reduce your food footprint, and I am going to challenge myself to one of these suggestions. I already have two vegetable gardens at my house, however we only use these for about 6 months out of the year. BC Farmers Market association has a list of what is in season for any given month. However, I feel it is too late in the winter season to begin planting and as we are not yet into the spring planting season I feel this option for reducing my footprint is not the most effective currently. I do not eat much meat, chicken is the only meat I eat on a regular basis, but I do not eat it for every meal. Although I was shocked by the data provided suggesting that 18% of greenhouse gas emissions are associated with meat consumption, I feel that this area is also not the most productive place to put my efforts.
The only suggestion left in this category is to choose foods with less packaging to reduce waste. As I am not the main grocery shopper in my household I do not feel that this is the easiest goal, and wouldn't have a large effect either due to my current habits. I always use re-usable glass or plastic containers to bring my food to school daily, I very rarely buy food when I am out, we never use plastic bags for groceries but have our own tubs and cloth bags instead. I also never buy foods with excessive packaging, or in "convenient" sized portions. Because of this I am not sure how to reduce my "Food Footprint", and am slightly confused as to how I made it so high in this category.
One huge thing, which I believe will be my goal for this week, is composting. In my house we are not very good with composting, we have 2 large composts in the yard however our daily food wastes rarely make it into these composts, especially in winter. It is my self-declared goal this week to implement a composting system and hope to involve everyone within this house! I found a composting guide online which I intend to read over again and use many of their tips in order to create a compost system!
After reading Andrews post about thermostat, I have lowered mine to 18*C, which for me is rather cold, but with the use of slippers and sweaters I hope this experiment will be a success.
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