Shopping locally, sourcing globally

I'm now a couple weeks into my car-free life. I'm walking more and, not surprisingly, buying more from neighbourhood stores. This is no great hardship. I live in a city. I live in a Chinatown. There's lots of fresh produce. Granted, a loaf of whole grain bread might necessitate a hike to a grocery store (there are three within a kilometre of my house, though). On the other hand, I can also get posh, organic artisinal bread from the bakery at the St. John the Compassionate Mission a couple blocks down the road.

So, I am certainly using less gas and creating fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Or am I? Because of the neighbourhood I live in, a lot of products are imported from China. Some things, like fruit juice, are hard to find. I bought apple juice for my son last week, and then noticed that it was imported from China. Think about this for a moment. We live in Ontario, which is covered in apple orchards. According to the Ontario Apple Growers, the province's orchards produce about 150 million tons of juice apples a year. I shudder at the thought of the energy wasted shipping apple juice to a major apple-growing region.

The local food movement has made people much more conscious of the distance their food travels. The 100-Mile Diet, by James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith certainly added a Canadian perspective, though I have my doubts about the feasibility of a city the size of Toronto feeding itself with that small an area. It's about 30 miles to the nearest farm. But their point is well taken.

Right now, I'm reading one of the latest additions to the library of books concerned with tracking the environmental and social cost of food and other commodities. In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce goes on a selective journey to figure out where his stuff came from and how it got to his local shops. It's a British book, so some examples will be less relevant to North Americans, particularly sections relating to fresh produce. But much of the book is relevant, and a good overview of just how global our closets and pantries have become.

The book is something of a travelogue, though Pearce frequently leaves out the colour that would really bring to life the people who grow and produce his stuff. In that regard, the book was a disappointment. But Pearce has travelled the world, and he does have fascinating stories to tell. The section on cotton made for a particularly compelling read.

The other shortcoming of the book is that it rarely presents a solution. After reading his section on coffee, for example, I'm left without a clear answer as to whether or not "Fair Trade" coffee really makes a difference. But the book is not about easy answers, it's about difficult questions, and he gives us the information we need to start our own journeys toward answers. In that regard, it's a valuable resource. And thus, it's going onto the Green Tenant bookshelf.

Car Free: Week One

Here it is, a week into my new, car-free life. What difference has it made?

I still got my son to school on time every day. We walked for nine of the ten trips last week. Each trip is 1.8 km. Because I work from a home office, this means that I did the walk 18 times for a total of 32.4 km. I feel healthier for it, and look forward to continuing. And yes, I do own good winter boots and a warm parka.

We normally try to walk, but with bad weather, dark evenings and my general laziness, there's a good chance I would have wussed out and picked him up in the car a few times. If my walking replaced four round trips, that means my new car-free lifestyle saved 14.4 km of driving. My old 2002 Focus wagon got 8.3 l/100km, so that means I saved about 1.2 litres of gasoline. Not a lot, but there were no major trips last week. According to the government's Office of Energy Efficiency, burning a litre of fuel produces 2.4 kg of carbon dioxide. So my walking prevented about 2.9 kg of carbon dioxide from enering the atmosphere. Not bad for a start.

The one day when we took transit, we did so because I had a bunch of errands to run. With a $9 TTC day pass, this was an easy thing to do. I just ordered my errands so they'd be in a big circle route, then took subways, buses or streetcars between them. It did not significantly add to the time it took to complete the errands. Not cheaper than driving, I expect, but it was fun to just grab whatever transit I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I happened to be, without having to think about having correct change. Now I know what metropass holders feel like.

So, no major hardships yet. I feel healthier and happier, and my stress level is a little lower.

Car free

This is a big step. I've gone car-free.

That's not to say I'll never drive again, or that a car won't be my occasional choice in terms of transportation mode. But I no longer own a car, and no longer have easy access to one. I won't be able to drive to my son's school if I'm feeling lazy, or drive to the grocery store (neither of these places is far enough from home to warrant driving).

To be clear, I like driving. I like it a lot. But it's an expensive hobby, an unnecessary luxury and one of the most environmentally harmful things I did.

One of the things I'll be doing with the proceeds is buying a bike. I want a bike anyway, so this seems like a good time. Nobody ever questions selling an old car to trade up to a new one, so why should anyone question trading it in for a decent bike (likely a used one)?

Sometimes I do need a car. There are events I need to attend for work that are very difficult to get to by public transit. And there will be times when I want to get out of town to a place that isn't accessible by bus or rail (or where it's very inconvenient). Right now, I'm debating the best option. I'd really like to sign up with something like Zipcar, but am still weighing the costs. Their rates seem to have gone up recently, and since most of my use would be for weekend getaways, I'm not convinced they're economical. The day rate isn't outrageous, but it only includes 150 km, and then it's 30 cents a kilometre beyond that. For multi-day getaways, renting a car might just be cheaper.

What I do like about Zipcar is the ability to grab one for an hour or two in order to run a bunch of errands. I also like that they have cars close to where I live (which none of the rental agencies do).

If there are people reading this blog who have used Zipcar or AutoShare (particularly in Toronto), please comment and let me know how it's worked for you.