8 ms·
> Buying bananas has no relevance to climate Can you explain why? All the bananas in my UK supermarket are flown from Africa. > minimise use of cars and plane
by alva 5y ago
> Buying bananas has no relevance to climate
Can you explain why? All the bananas in my UK supermarket are flown from Africa.
> minimise use of cars and planes
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoSorry, should have included the link and explanation: basically growing food is energy intensive, but transporting food by ship is actually very efficient. This results in a paradox where locally grown food, if it needs additional lights, spraying, ploughing, etc. is worse for the environment than food grown in perfect climage and transported to you. https://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/ https://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-loca...
- PeterisP 5y agoSome sources e.g. http://www.fao.org/world-banana-forum/projects/good-practices/carbon-footprint/en/ http://www.fao.org/world-banana-forum/projects/good-practice... assert that ~2/3 of banana GHG footprint is caused by transportation and storage, including things like refrigeration on ship. It's probably still more efficient (both money-wise and GHG-wise) than growing bananas locally in UK; now that would need a lot of extra energy; but on the other hand it would be more efficient to eat food that normally grows locally in your climate instead of bananas.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoOfcourse that's true, but no-one is (or at least should be) eating multiple kilos of bananas, coffee and chocolate. They are not a staple food like meat and potatoes. All I am trying to say is that in the total carbon footprint of a person, they account for a miniscule part of the whole, and that things like a well insulated house, transport, etc. will be vastly more important