Linscombe Farm Newsletter 21st and 22nd February 2008 |
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| Posted on Feb 21 2008 at 1:53 PM |
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The Food From Britain newsletter has just come through on email, and although I’m supposed to be doing something completely different, it’s a good excuse to run off a newsletter. I’m going to crib shamelessly as the information is applicable to all our box customers and farmers’ market customers alike and I’m sure you’ll be interested.
You’ll all be pleased to hear that climate change issues are increasingly influencing shopper purchasing decisions and that retailers are increasingly making more effort to green-up their operations. Food miles are high on the agenda with statistics like “less than 1% of all food imported into the UK, travels by air, but constitutes 11% of all food transport emissions”. The report does go on to say though that some air imported vegetables may have a lower carbon footprint than those grown in a heated green house in the UK. Now, that is shocking isn’t it, so a good job we don’t use any of those then – please remember not to ask us for tomatoes in June OK?! ?Real efforts do seem to be being made though – M&S plans to be carbon neutral by 2012 and Tesco is using the Liverpool to Manchester canal for freight transfer, which will have a 80% reduction on carbon emissions (although it doesn’t specify what carbon emissions this refers to). In any case, I don’t suppose that will really help with supplying the new Crediton Tesco store – unless the susceptibility to flooding on the site proves to be more of an advantage than any of us had previously considered.
Many of the major retailers are getting on the band-wagon of “sourcing products locally” - as we know from previous newsletters, for small outlets/website retailers, this can in reality mean from the local fruit and veg wholesaler – please quiz mercilessly before buying! For the larger multiples, the cynic in me wonders (as you will also know from previous newsletters) where the locally sourced products are packaged etc.
Talking of packaging, another major topic is the use of plastic carrier bags and packaging in general. Did you know that 50% of all household waste due for landfill has originated with the top five supermarkets? Did you know that China is banning ALL plastic carrier bags from the 1st June, whilst the UK mostly has grass-roots movements seeking to make local towns/villages carrier bag free? It has been an amazing change at the Farmers’ Markets over the years – originally, we were always supplying our customers with re-cycled supermarket plastic carrier bags to take their vegetables home in. These days if you ask a customer “do you need a carrier bag?” they respond as though you have just accused them one of the seven deadly sins – invariably the response is a horrified look with an accompanying “no thanks, I’ve brought my bag for life”. Even the type of bag for life you have is getting to be quite competitive – just how long is life? (Luckily the Linscombe bags seem to rate quite highly with customers on that front!). Those customers that do need a carrier bag nearly always apologise profusely, even more so if it’s because they left their own bag for life at home. Did you know that paper bags use more energy and materials to produce than carrier/polythene bags? Please note this if you come to the market – we do have some customers who come to the stall, eschew the polythene bags (even in wet weather when the paper ones can be dreadful), puts one item of a dozen different vegetables each in their own paper bag and then flourish their bag for life at the check-out – um, I think the point is being missed somewhat here. It’s OK, I’m not personally going to be at a market until the next Crediton one, so you can change your habits before then without feeling totally mortified. Hopefully you aren’t so mortified that you go and shop elsewhere, (just think of the fresh vegetables, the flavour and the totally genuine low food miles!) but these things need to be highlighted occasionally, especially since the supermarkets are tackling their customers with their packaging! If you are a box customer, you can be rest assured that if you have been with us since we introduced our plastic boxes, you have personally saved the manufacture of 150 cardboard boxes (using the vegbox industry standard lifespan of a cardboard box) If you are a box customer who is always forgetting to return your boxes, then how about taking your bag for life to collect your vegetables out of your box, or if you keep on forgetting your bag for life, one of those recycled supermarket plastic carrier bags whilst they are still making them…….
The scariest thing about writing a newsletter like this is that you start to mentally list all the things you do or own that aren’t as green as they could be and that you feel guilty about. Whilst writing this newsletter I’ve carefully put a mug worth of water in the kettle to make a cuppa so I don’t use more energy than required to boil it – then I’ve had to boil it twice as I got too engrossed in this – best to run out of space before I have to boil it again, or worse, confess to the major environmental sins – like having another child so we have to get a bigger car to fit all those blessed seats for health and safety – personally I would keep them all at home working on the farm so we didn’t need a car, but no-one else seems to think that’s remotely funny and even my husband starts to question the sense of breeding with someone whose family originate from the Somerset levels, where you could never travel anywhere anyway. Seriously though, please do……Enjoy your vegetables! All the best, Helen, Phil, Tom, David, James and Bump.
Printed on recycled paper, which may or may not have had a higher carbon footprint than non-recycled…argghhhhhh! If you do NOT wish to receive paper newsletters, please email us. Market customers can email to subscribe to market email newsletters and we’ll print less to take to market - State clearly MARKET newsletter email! Thankyou.
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