An article in the Toronto Star this week put forward what I think is a very interesting and feasible idea for helping individuals reduce their carbon emissions.
Everything we buy in the grocery store is labelled in abundance with price, health information, ingredients, and of course, advertising. So why not add one more nugget of knowledge to the plethora of print on our labels? Say a big sticker with a rating showing how many carbon emissions the product was responsible for.
A consumer may not be thinking about cutting down on carbon emissions when they're out at the grocery story now, but add this vital piece of information and suddenly you can easily add one more routine to your shelf comparisons.
Imagine this scenario: you live in winter-burdened Wisconsin and are shopping for fresh asparagus. Thanks to that crop of green stalks flown in from Peru yesterday, the produce section is full of the fresh, crunchy vegetable. But wait, there's a big fat number on that elastically-held together asparagus bunch.
Because of that airplane ride, the carbon cost of that asparagus is through the roof. You think twice and decide to buy the locally-farmed, yet canned, asparagus. When you eat dinner that night, less emissions were emitted to get the food to your plate.
Granted, the asparagus isn't freshly pricked from Peruvian soil. But I still say this is one fresh idea from The Toronto Star's deputy foreign editor Peter Martyn.
