Green Grocery Shopping

By News Canada

Turn your shopping list 'green'

(NC)-What better place to start saving the environment than at your local grocery store? Making smart choices in the grocery aisles can help reduce your family's environmental footprint. Here are some simple ways to turn your shopping list green:

Buy local. When food doesn't have to travel far, it requires less packaging materials, fewer preservatives and often fewer pesticides. Not only are these processes bad for the environment but they also take away from the taste of the food. Another benefit to buying locally grown food is the shorter distances the produce needs to travel, which results in less damaging greenhouse gases.

Buy environmentally friendly products. Many companies are trying to be more environmentally conscious so look for brands that offer natural products in recycled packages. For example, Green Works is a new line of natural cleaners that can be found at your local grocery store. You can get an all-purpose cleaner, a dilutable cleaner, a glass and surface cleaner, a toilet bowl cleaner, and a bathroom cleaner. All products are 99% natural, come in recyclable containers and are made with biodegradable cleaning agents. Information on this is available online at www.greenworkscleaners.com.

Take fewer trips. Car emissions continue to be a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in Canada making carpooling and fewer trips to the grocery store a must. Making a grocery list in advance can help cut down on trips to the store for one-off forgotten items. Organizing a grocery store carpool with friends or neighbours is also a fun way to spend time with people while reducing the number of cars on the road.

Cut down on plastic bags. Canadians use approximately 10 billion plastic bags each year. Reducing that number means bringing reusable grocery bags with you to the store. If you don't already have some, most stores have their own brand of reusable bags you can purchase while you are there. Another alternative is to use cardboard boxes to carry your groceries or paper bags that can be recycled.