Ecological footprint

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night, and so I sat up for a bit with some ecological footprint calculators. I knew going into it that the numbers wouldn't be pretty. In the past six months I've flown to England (for a wonderful summer program and, while I regret the ecological implications, I don't regret the program at all), as well as to British Columbia (ostensibly for a family wedding, but more to see my Nanna, who's been rather ill for the last year - better to fly out for a party than a funeral, I think.) But, they were even less pretty than I hoped, and for the first time I sat down and actively tried to figure out why that is.

Part of the issue is that I live alone. No matter how much I reduce my consumption, use less energy and less water, and change all of the small details about how I live, living alone hurts my footprint, even in a medium-sized apartment. Another part is that I use the bus a lot, not just to get to school, but to go see my boyfriend, who lives over 500 km away. I've pretty much eliminated flying there, which is a good thing, but the travel is still not such a good thing, although I'm hoping that can be remedied soon. The trouble is, at this point in time, these are things that are difficult for me to change, much as I would like to. I'm working on it, but it is slow.

The other thing (although not the biggest by quite a stretch), and the one that's probably easiest for me is food. I'm vegetarian, but I am rather fond of cheese and eggs, which ups my numbers. I also don't live all that close to a farmer's market, and most of my food comes from the supermarket, which isn't always known for its local food options. But, out of all the things to change, this is the one that I can start immediately and most easily, so I took food on as my afternoon project.

Since I was heading out anyway, I first decided to go to the Goodwill bookstore up the street. Happily, I came away with a copy of "Putting Food By". It's an older one, so I'm going to double check the canning standards, but I'm excited about having instructions and recipes for preserving foods now.

I then wandered over to the grocery store. At best, foods are labelled with their province or country of origin, so I decided to stick to those grown in Ontario. It's not a perfect solution, but better than nothing for now. I wound up with a large cabbage, 10 pounds each of potatoes, yellow onions, and carrots, and a bag of empire apples. Other options were squash, rutabega, and turnips, although I left those alone for now. I found it harder to go with local foods when I was working on my food stores. I picked up peanut butter, a large bag of cornmeal, and brown rice, none of which are local. They'll be added to my food stores for future use.

I don't know if this was entirely a success. Some staples - like pasta and peanut butter - seem to be a lot harder to find locally grown. I haven't started looking for eggs or cheese yet, since I have rather a lot of that in the fridge from a past grocery shopping trip. I'm sure it's not impossible, and I'm going to look harder, but I was hoping for better. Fresh stuff, however, seemed to be relatively easy, so long as I was willing to walk past the citrus and less hardy greens at the front of the store. I'm going to keep looking, but in the meantime, I'm going to settle in and make myself a barbeque potato and carrot casserole where at least half the ingredients are local.