Monday, June 01, 2009

Most Ironic Eco-Food!

As you may recall, I've been thinking about trying to be more eco-friendly by buying locally-grown foods. Y'know, if only somebody out there in cyberspace would create the tools to make it easy and fun for me to do it. ;^)

So, I'm trying to figure out what to think of this new fruit drink I've found: Amazônia. According to the packaging, it helps preserve the tropical rain forest because the fruit is cultivated in a sustainable way, and the production follows international (independently verified) standards of fair trade. And then the fruit juice is shipped around the world from Brazil to Switzerland and sold in little disposable-cardboard cans.

What do you think? Eco or not?

It's pretty tasty...

5 comments:

Th. said...

.

I can't decide. I read that Australian lamb can be shipped to Britain and still have a smaller carbon footprint than British-raised lamb, but most of the time I think that if my blueberries have to come from Chile then maybe I should just go without for a few months.

On the other hand, if I don't buy the sustainable jungle-bred drink and that means they have no way to make money other than burning down the forest, is that really the better choice?

Being green is hard!

(I will say that shipping bottled water from Tahiti and calling it green has got to be the most disingenuous thing I've ever seen.)

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Th.!!!

Re: if I don't buy the sustainable jungle-bred drink and that means they have no way to make money other than burning down the forest, is that really the better choice?That's kind of what I'm thinking. Ideally, I'd rather not see my food shipped such a long way and packaged in individual, disposable containers. However, if it means the producers are preventing X amount of rainforest from being burned down, it may well be worth it...

beatdad said...

hmmm....If they are attempting to restore rain forest in the Amazon, it could end up canceling out the ill effects of transporting the drink.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Beat Dad!!!

That's true. Additionally, if I weren't drinking this, I might be tempted to drink some other individually-portioned-packaging beverage grown in a distant land, which would be worse....

Th. said...

.

It's kind of like diamonds. I've sworn to never buy a diamond, but what about the poor African country who do trade ethically? Often it's their only legitimate resource and I'm going to screw them because of Sierra Leone? It would be nice if this world offered clear answers.... But then, what would be learn?