The Green Grocers’ food miles go Carbon Neutral

It's reassuring to see that all the three main parties are making some commitment to fighting climate change...

Climate change affects us all. Through the burning of fuels for electricity, industry and transport obsessed generation and the destruction of carbon dioxide absorbing forests; we are set to double the carbon concentration in the atmosphere by 2030. The concentration of these gases has therefore intensified the greenhouse effect which many scientists believe is causing global warming. The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1983, seven of them since 1990. Global temperature in 1998 was the hottest in historical record while the earth's average temperature has risen by 0.5C in the last hundred years. Further information can be seen on wikipedia or The Stern Report

What does that actually mean?

More heat waves, floods and droughts…more lakes in Norfolk. And it’s not going to get better. The Earth’s climate is projected to warm an additional 1.4o to 5.8oC between 1990 and 2100, depending on how mankind chooses to develop and the efforts taken to combat climate change. 

What can we do?

You can: recycle, switch off lights and the TV power, walk more and pop to B&Q to buy a wind turbine. But what can companies do? Quite a lot actually.
The Green Grocers have been externally assessed to see what C02 emissions we generate and how much C02 is generated in food miles. Even though we recycle nearly all our waste, use renewable energy and aim to buy as much local organic produce as possible we still generated 10 tonnes a year of C02 just in day-to-day running. But, in terms of food miles, we generated 127 tonnes of C02 a year! This includes the transportation of all our produce, not just fruit and vegetables. Normally, our wholesalers are liable for this C02 emission – they are the ones delivering. But rather than wait for them we have made the decision to offset this emission.

Food Smiles

We have now offset all our food miles. Any C02 produced because of food miles has been offset. To offset we have paid for two projects that will cancel our carbon emissions.

We have invested in the Scolel Te Social Forestry Project, Chiapas, Mexico and Bushenyi District, Uganda. Both projects enables farmers to plant trees (fruit and nut tree orchards in Chiapas and mahogany, cedar, African cherry, laurel, and silk trees in Uganda) on their land, restoring it to its original forested state. These trees will soak up carbon dioxide to effectively ‘neutralise’ carbon dioxide generating activities such as our food miles. In addition, only eco-friendly farming techniques are adopted therefore benefiting the people, land and environment. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.