I’m taking the No Impact Experiment for the first week of January. Here’s Day 1: Consumption, Day 2: Trash, and Day 3: Transportation.
I used to have my green eating habits all set up. I had a box of local organic produce delivered to my door — and could supplement that delivery with a short walk to my local farmers market, Co-opportunity, or Whole Foods, all of which offered local produce with clearly-marked origins — fresh, loose, and packaging free.
Then I moved to West Hollywood.
Moving’s tough after you’ve lived somewhere for a few years, carefully settling into an eco-routine. Now, the produce delivery company’s gone out of business, the local farmers market is 2.5 miles away (I no longer have my bike, as I mentioned yesterday), and the local grocery options are Pavilions and Trader Joe’s. To be fair, both those stores offer organic produce — if you’re satisfied with a very limited, non-local, unnecessarily overpackaged, and, in the case of Pavilions, frightfully overpriced selection.
Good local organic food was my main justification for my weekly fossil-fuel burning trips to Santa Monica. There I loaded up on bulk organic fair trade coffee, organic California brown rice, and all sorts of organic beans and nuts. That said, I wasn’t buying that much produce even though I could carry it home in a car — because my new tiny apartment only has a mini-fridge. With the amount of produce I go through on a daily basis, what I can fit into the mini-fridge only lasts me a half a week at most.
In any case, I nixed those carbon-intensive weekly trips as of Tuesday — which means I needed to get more creative for yesterday’s No Impact Challenge: Food!
Luckily, I was recently introduced to the Melrose Place Farmers Market on Sundays — which isn’t in West Hollywood, but is nonetheless closer to my place. However, that market’s still a little over a mile away — a too-long distance to carry more than a couple days’ worth of produce.
But I’ll start there for now, making sure to make the trip every Sunday. I’m also going to get a CSA delivery or organic produce delivery — a regular CSA subscription’s not possible because I can’t find one with a pickup location I can walk to and from while carrying a large bag of produce.
And though I’m done with weekly trips to Co-opportunity, I’m still planning to make monthly trips on the second Tuesday of each month, when Co-opportunity offers a 10% discount to members. That’s when I’ll stock up on all my bulk grains and beans and fair trade coffee, to keep it all packaging-free.
What I’m trying to point out with this whole exercise: Eating local and healthy can be easy, and traveling green can be relatively easy too. But eating local and healthy while traveling green — if you don’t have a bike — can be a serious challenge, due to the simple weight of the produce involved.
One thing I’ve noticed with L.A. eco-foodies is that they often choose to ignore their own fossil-fuel intensive travel miles, while getting almost fanatically obsessed with the travel miles incurred by food items before they’re bought — and loaded into their cars. This despite the fact that solo driving is the worst kind of travel miles, far worse than the travel miles incurred by trucks and ships that move a lot of food for a lot of people in one go.
When you go food shopping, what do you tend to focus on first? Car-free accessibility? Fair trade? Locally-grown creds? Plastic packaging-free status? Organic certification?
Earlier:
>> Organic produce delivery in L.A.
>> Organic fruits and veggies, simplified
>> Organic meals, delivered in Los Angeles
Update, 1/10/11: Don’t miss the rest of the No Impact Experiment series! Here’s Day 1: Consumption, Day 2: Trash, Day 3: Transportation, Day 4: Food, Day 5: Energy, Day 6: Water and Day 7: Give back.
Obviously I’m biased being a bike nut, but I cannot imagine doing stuff car-free without a bike for some kinds of trips. It extends range so much further and carrying capacity so much more than walking, is easy to maintain, and is not limited to transit schedules and routes.
With a rear rack and a couple bags it’s possible to carry a fairly substantial load of groceries. Meghan and I were doing CSA pick up on bike for a while, but got more produce than we knew what to do with sometimes and mostly just shop at the co-op now.
There are lot of creative ways to store bikes with limited space. With folding bikes becoming more mainstream and a little more affordable, it’s possible to get bikes with a foot print storage no more than a suitcase.
If you have a car, there is space somewhere that car goes. Is it a building lot or street parking? If it is a building lot, sometimes there is extra space in a garage a bike can be parked. We have 2.5 of our bikes (I call the tandem 1.5 bikes), in our building parking garage. The other 6 go up on the wall behind my computer in our extra bedroom. We are planning to downsize our bike fleet though, and are also looking into smaller apartments, as Meghan prepares to go back to school.
Gary Kavanagh´s last blog ..Santa Monica Bike Plan Up For Discussion At Planning Commission Again Tomorrow Night- This Time With Guest Speaker Charlie Gandy- Mobility Coordinator Of Long Beach
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — January 6, 2011 @ 7:01 pm
I’m lucky to be able to walk to the farmers market, and I transport my haul in a rolling wicker basket from French Basketeer (and the CSA I occasionally use delivers to my door). When I contemplated moving a while back, proximity to a farmers market was my #1 criteria.
Comment by Mel — January 6, 2011 @ 7:52 pm
Siel – stop by and visit on your second Tuesday visits to the C-Opportunity – our office is 2 doors down on 16th :)
Comment by Sherri Akers — January 7, 2011 @ 7:13 am
Way before I even had a bike, I’d walk 4 miles round trip each weekend to my local farmers market to pick up stuff for the week. The parking situation at the market was such a mess that it wasn’t worth the hassle of driving. I got incredibly frustrated with the state of sidewalks in LA during these times. The majority of the walk was along Ventura Blvd. in Studio City and there are places on both sides of the street where the sidewalks just don’t exist.
Once I got a bike, my weekly farmers market trip were made that way (there are 2 farmers markets on Sunday morning near me, and both are about 2 miles from my apartment). Biking seemed to make the most sense. I got a rack for my bike, some panniers and a backpack (Trade Joe’s is also right next to both farmers markets, so I usually stop there as well) and that does the trick. I love biking to the market. Parking is a breeze and it just makes sense to me.
I know I insisted for so long that I didn’t have space for a bike because despite having a parking space and no car, I was not permitted to keep my bike in the garage. I also don’t have a balcony or any space outside. Eventually I managed to squeeze 2 bikes into my apt and it’s so worth it. I love the flexibility that biking gives me that I don’t care that I have to move a bike out of the way every time I go into my closet to get clothes.
Comment by M — January 7, 2011 @ 8:05 am
Also – forgot to mention that I have some friends that have folding bikes that they store in their cars pretty much all of the time. It might be something worth considering.
Comment by M — January 7, 2011 @ 8:08 am
i live 1.5 miles from my Saturday farmers market here in chilly Oakland i’m about to hop on my bike I am grateful to live within a couple miles radius of several farmers markets depending on the day
Comment by melvin — January 8, 2011 @ 12:02 pm
I always tend to opt for biking if there is a farmer’s market nearby. But since that isn’t always an option, I try to shop at one site online, and have those products delivered to my door. That way, I can cut down on the amount of packaging used, and I can also be more economically efficient by using all my coupons I find online.
I suggest you all check out this new site, winwinliving.com– it offers daily deals on restaurants, spas and services in LA all who operate with an eco-conscious mindset at 50-90% off. So whether you choose to have products delivered to your door, or go to these businesses yourself, at least you know you are shopping at the most eco-friendly businesses out there.
Comment by Willamina Wentworth — January 10, 2011 @ 3:51 pm