Sustainable Ideas...

As if rising prices for food, gas, and basic living supplies weren’t enough of a concern. Now, as more people are buying organic, from bamboo sheets to peaches, living green is quickly becoming a luxury. As Bruce Watson ruminated on the Daily Green, “more and more people are beginning to associate green living with wealth.”

In the grocery store, once non-existent, organics are now fetching premium prices. The reason, as Watson points out, is that transporting organic food (that isn’t bred to withstand long distance travel) costs more, and organic crops generally produce less—a field of organic corn yields less kernels, organic cows produce less milk, organic chickens take longer to get to full-size—than non-organic, especially genetically modified options, so there’s less supply to meet an increasing demand.

The irony hovering above this entire issue is that to live truly green, with minimal impact on the environment, we should worry less about buying organic and more about buying close to home. In general, organic animals and plants take up more space and resources than non-organics. And, when they’re being transported the requisite 1,500 miles, they require refrigerated trucks, which create more emissions. To learn more about that, check out this post about Carbon Footprints.

Thinking along those lines, it’s not hard at all to live green—trade in the supermarket’s organic apples from across the country for a farmer’s market apple grown closer to home. So, how do you maintain a green lifestyle within your budget?

Photo from The Cobbers Blog.