Last month as a part of my class assignment I made a project on climate-friendly food habits. I did a lot of research on how we can eat healthy, organic, low calorie food that is above all climate-friendly and how much CO2 is in our plate. Through this report I would like to share my findings and my thoughts on this topic.

Let’s take some example from Germany- 500 grams of strawberries from Germany emit (during the strawberry season from May to July) 80 grams less CO2 than the same amount of strawberry shipped in from Italy. And in comparison with strawberry from South Africa, German strawberry emit 6,000 grams of CO2 less. Moreover, 500 grams of organic butter saves 425 grams of CO2 compared to conventional butter , and 1 kilogram of eco bread emits 1.1 kilograms less CO2 than the same amount of conventional bread.

What does this mean to us? When it is possible, we should always buy products that have a good ‘CO2-footprint”, that don’t require too much energy to be produced and that don’t have to be imported from far away. The easier thing to do is to buy products that are produced or grown in the area. This is called buying locally.

Grocery stores- even the most conventional ones- react fairly reliably to customer requests. When for example the head of the fruit and vegetable department notices that customers are beginning to show an interest in how many miles particular food have to be transported before arriving in the store, they will certainly respond. They are not reacting because they are in sudden agreement with environmental arguments like ours. No, they react because they want to attract a particular variety of customers. But that doesn’t have to matter to us. What’s most important is that environmentally friendly products are gaining ground and making their way onto the shelves of regular supermarkets.

Sometimes, though, things are a little bit more complicated that they appear at first glance. Exactly how environmentally friendly certain fruits and vegetables are, depends to a large extend on whether they are harvested during their actual growing season.

More important than all of the kilometers travelled, ecologically grown and recycled tin cans, there is something else: the responsible, economical and sustainable use of energy must be as natural as possible. If an environmentally friendly behavior is firmly instilled in us then a tremendous amount will already be won. If, however, we constantly have to remind ourselves every single time why being wasteful is so bad, then we are losing the precious time that remains for us to do even better.

Therefore, we have to have the courage to take small steps! Courage, especially because the more we have, the more people will join in and the easier it will become.