Events Calendar

Took place on Saturday March 01 2008

Local and Sustainable Food Lunch & Workshop

The delicious lunch was provided by local resident Jo Simister at the BedZED Pavilion. After we had filled up on soup, Arabic bread, salads and relished followed by copious quantities of tea and cake, we listened to a presentation on the ecological footprint of food by Anna Francis and heard from pioneering sustainable food organisations Eco Local, VegZED and Food up Front.

We then broke into groups to discuss how to reduce food waste, promote local production and a low meat and dairy diet, as it is vital to tackle all three to reduce our ecological footprint.

The group identified the following actions:

Action 4.1 Reduce meat consumption and perhaps only eat once a week.
Responsibility Consumers (residents but also restaurants, shops, hospitals etc)

Action 4.2 If you do eat meat remember that pigs and chickens have a lower environmental impact than sheep and cows.
Responsibility Consumers (residents but also restaurants, shops, hospitals etc)

Action 4.3 Support local producers because their food has less food miles and its good to boost the local economy.
Responsibility Consumers (residents but also restaurants, shops, hospitals etc)

Action 4.4 Keep chickens at home and feed them your scraps.
Responsibility Residents with gardens

Action 4.5 Substitute oat milk for cows' milk. It still gives you calcium and has a lower environmental impact than soya milk.
Responsibility Everyone

Action 4.6 Plan meals in advance so you have what you need and don't waste food.
Responsibility Everyone

Action 4.7 Get militant about packaging! Some residents commented that packets can be really hard to open, and the level of packaging is unnecessary. So take off all the superfluous bits and leave them at the supermarket!
Responsibility Food shoppers (Read this article for journalists' experience of doing this at 3 supermarkets)

Action 4.8 Wean children on the maximum number of different foods so they are less likely to turn into fussy eaters
Responsibility Parents

Action 4.9 Share your garden with your neighbours if you have more space than you can use. They might like a vegetable patch there, especially if they live in a flat and don't have a garden.
Responsibility Residents with gardens.

Action 4.10 Drink more sherry! (It's an aperitif so should stimulate appetite and lead to less food waste)
Responsibility Adults

Action 4.11 When you are supermarket shopping, use a basket not a trolley and don't shop when you are hungry. This should cut down on the amount we buy.
Responsibility Shoppers

Action 4.12 A map of fruit trees/ bushes in the area that we can all pick fruit from. There are lots of apple trees along London Road where the fruit goes uneaten.
Responsibility BioRegional as part of our resource mapping work for Hackbridge.

Action 4.13 Don't always pick the perfect looking fruit and vegetables; a lot of imperfect stuff gets rejected by supermarkets because they think shoppers don't want it. Learn to shop for the taste of food not its appearance.
Responsibility Shoppers and shops.

Action 4.14 A Dig for Victory campaign for Hackbridge. The Environment Agency has said that the battle to deal with climate change needs to be fought like "World War Three". We need to grown more of our own food - it's good for health, happiness and ecological footprint.
Responsibility Gardeners, allotment holders, LB Sutton, BioRegional, Eco Local, Food up Front...

Action 4.15 A pig on Hackbridge Green or Mill Green to eat our food scraps!
Responsibility ?

Action 4.16 Circulate pickle, chutney and casserole recipes to vegetable growers so they can make use of their surplus.
Responsibility Wallington and Carshalton WI, allotment holders and gardeners.

Action 4.17 Don't drink bottled water and ask for tap water in restaurants. Bottled water isn't as good for you, has lots of plastic packaging and uses energy to transport it.
Responsibility Consumers, shops and restaurants. Not selling bottled water could also be a condition of lease for cafés, restaurants and shops on council owned land or on new developments.

Action 4.18 Focus on making vegetarian food attractive rather than being anti-meat. An example was given of a ready meal company whose sales soared when they removed the vegetarian label but carried on selling vegetarian food.
Responsibility Shops, cafés and restaurants, food producers

Action 4.19 Cooking and food lessons in schools to promote sustainable food choices to children.
Responsibility Schools

Action 4.20 A map of local food producers.
Responsibility BioRegional as part of resource mapping work for Hackbridge

Action 4.21 Helping new food producers get started, this would boost enterprise, employment and reduce food miles.
Responsibility New Economics Foundation, Sutton Chamber, LB Sutton

Action 4.22 Develop local food growing skills and use the knowledge of older residents.
Responsibility Schools and colleges, community groups.
Progress EcoLocal already have free food-growing projects for young people and parents. Growing Skills project that delivers practical outdoor food growing and horticulture skills sessions for 14-24 year olds. These introduce young people to the basics of food growing and horticulture as recreational, healthy exercise and as a potential career opportunity. The Beanstalk Project is open to families and groups which include children - , Brownies, Beavers, Scouts, Guides, schools - who live in the London Borough of Sutton. EcoLocal are applying for funding to increase this area of work.

Action 4.23 Find other suitable spaces to be used for food growing because the allotments are all full. The suitability of land needs to be assessed as may be contaminated; we could then map the food growing areas. Suitable areas may include; unused front and back gardens, municipal open land, communal gardens such as those on housing estates and parks.
Responsibility Sutton parks, BioRegional, Eco Local, Food up Front, developers and housing estate management companies.

Action 4.24 Campaign to get local shops to stock local and seasonal food
Responsibility Residents' groups

Action 4.25 More fruit and nut trees in public spaces
Responsibility Developers, Estates' Management companies and LB Sutton Street Care and parks teams

Action 4.26 Give surplus food to your friends and neighbours or invite friends round for dinner so that it doesn't go to waste.
Responsibility Residents with EcoLocal to support this through expansion of food growing network (seeking funding)

Action 4.27 Question the validity of best before dates and don't automatically stock up on 2 for 1 deals. Are you really going to eat it all?
Responsibility Shoppers

Contact: anna@oneplanetsutton.org

Type of event: One Planet Living

Related principles: Local and Sustainable Food

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