It is becoming increasingly important to many of us that our choice of shopping is friendly to the environment and there are many steps that we can take to this end.
Firstly, your choice of transport is very important. Taking the car three miles to buy just a loaf of bread does not help the cause! Try to cycle, walk, or take public transport if possible. And if you do have to take the car try and consolidate your shopping into larger, less frequent trips.
Buy natural products where you can. shop for wooden products instead of plastic and make sure that they are eco-certified as being from sustainable sources. Buy cotton over synthetic for your clothes and again check the source if you can.
When buying food or anything else try to buy Fairtrade as you know that the producer has been paid a decent wage. It may be a little more expensive, but we should be prepared to pay the price. You can now find Fairtrade products in many sectors from food and wine to clothes and jewellery and they are stocked by many supermarkets and high street stores.
When you are choosing food it can be a tough decision on the air miles – on one hand, if the beans were grown in Kenya, they were of course flown here, to the detriment of the environment. But on the other hand if we boycott products flown from other countries completely it will have a devastating effect on the people there.
