I drive with the windows down. I love the fresh air, the wind in my hair, the sun on my arms. I get a kick out of smelling the changing seasons or feeling the true level of humidity, fog or misting rain in the air.
Now that we moved, I take a 15 minute commute to my job, and I spend most of my drive on the freeway. The worst part of the commute is the “armpit of Tacoma,” on I-5 between the Tacoma dome and Highway 16. Even when the traffic is moving freely, the air on this stretch of freeway gets caught in a little valley, and the smog is unbearable. I roll the windows up and try to have faith in the little air filter in my car.
What aggravates me the most about my commute, however, is there are many large trucks on the freeway, and they expel copious amounts of dark exhaust in to the atmosphere. It makes me gag! I get particularly upset when I see a truck whose exhaust is black and thick. How is it legal for companies to use trucks that pollute the air like this?
When Mr. Wetzel and I used to order groceries though Spud’s delivery service, I always enjoyed being able to see exactly how far each item on my grocery list travelled in order to get to the Spud warehouse. It really helped to put into perspective how great of an impact buying locally can have on the environment. Here are some interesting stats from Spud’s website:
“Each year, over $16 billion is spent across North America just to transport food. Most of this money is spent on 4 million trucks traveling 10 billion miles annually. The average grocery item travels 1500 miles to get from its place of production to where it is sold. All this transportation uses tons of fossil fuel and releases large quantities of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into our air.”
To help you get a clearer picture of what all this food transportation means, take a look at this infografic from Good magazine’s website (Click on the image above for a larger version, or go to Good’s website to see the original post here ). It is a terrific illustration of the impact it could make on the environment if more of us were to buy locally instead of aimlessly picking up whatever has been transported en mass to the local grocery chain.
Trucks stink. Farms don’t. Local food passes my smell test. Hopefully the more we demand local produce and products, the more our economy will shift to steward local economies and environments with greater responsibility and care.
By ekwetzel
2010-10-01
WEEK 13
(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
6 Corn on the Cob
2 Bok Choi
6 Apples
Cucumber
Red Onion
Head of Garlic
Green Cauliflower
Radishes
Green Beans
Head of Lettuce
Summer Squash & Zucchini
(In the middle)
Eggplant
Pumpkin Peppers
Tomatillos
4 Tomatoes
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