By IANS,
Sydney : Eating only locally produced and seasonal fruit and vegetables could dramatically reduce your carbon footprint, according to a team of Australian researchers.
The researchers have adopted a back-to-basics approach that also includes a return to drinking tap water as transporting bottled water uses up 314,000 barrels of oil in the country each year.
The researchers, from the Queensland University of Technology, have developed a website to popularise their ideas and to show people how to encourage sustainable food output.
“We are advocating a back-to-basics approach to ensure our food supply into the future,” said Courtney Jarrett, who has powered the project.
“We have produced a food wheel so that people can choose fruit and vegetables that are in season and so reduce the number of kilometres food has to travel before it appears on our plate, and save money too,” she said.
The Australian agricultural sector accounts for almost 60 percent of the country’s total methane emissions and food production in total makes up 30 percent of its overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Jarrett said many community nutritionists had already taken up the challenge and were eating only food that had been produced within a 500 km radius of where they live.
The website contains information on everything from recycling to sustainable fish for the plate.