SENTIENT TIMES April/May 2006

Shop Smart and Save the Planet

By Annie Hoy

We live on planet Earth and as her inhabitants have a responsibility to take good care of her. I would guess that saving our fair planet is not the first thing we think about when making our food choices. However, how we shop and what we buy does have an impact.

Often people remark that organic food is too expensive for them to buy on a regular basis. Smart shopping can mitigate some of the strain on one’s budget, especially if shoppers plan their purchases wisely. Menu planning based on seasonal foods and sale items can stretch your food dollars quite a bit. The payoff for the planet includes fewer chemicals in our streams, air and farmlands. Eating food that is in season decreases travel costs and the air pollution and resources used for transporting out of season proproducts from far away places.

Careful menu planning can really reduce our total food bill. According to Jean Chatzky of Money Magazine, the average American household spends $5,340 a year on food. And sadly, poor planning causes us to throw away an average of 14% of the food we purchase! Phil Lempert of SupermarketGuru.com says, “When we don’t plan, we buy the wrong things, which causes us to spend more money and more time.” When you’re trying to afford all those nutritious organic foods, planning be-comes essential if you want to eat well and not go over budget.

Taking the time to create your week’s worth of meals around sale items and seasonal foods, and then making a detailed list of what you need, is very effective. And it takes a lot of stress away. If you already know what you’ll be having for dinner any given night, you don’t have to continually answer the question, “What am I going to make for dinner?” It quiets small children and hungry housemates alike.

Stocking your pantry with environ-mentally friendly bulk foods that have little or no packaging, and on staples that are on sale, can eliminate the need for making many shopping trips which then decreases the gas you’ll use in your car.

Earth Day is right around the corner making this time of year a good time to think about what we can do to decrease our personal impact on our planet. You might think that any changes you make won’t matter, but if everyone reading this implements one small change in the way they shop, drive, or eat, the effect on the environment will be huge. What can you do right now? Think of one thing and then just do it.

Annie Hoy is the Outreach & Owner Services Manager for Ashland Food Co-op. She is a board member of the Ashland Chamber of Commerce and Provender Alliance and is a Trustee of the Howard Bowers Fund for Cooperatives. She also serves the cooperative community on a national level by advising the National Cooperative Grocers Association regarding branding and marketing. She is passionate about both food and cooperation.

SENTIENT TIMES
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