h a l f b a k e r yA dish best served not.
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Food labels typically include fat content, carbohydrate content, calorific content etc, however many consumers are interested in the environmental impact assoicated with getting that product to the shelf/home.
Therefore 3 new mandatory metrics on food:
Distance it's travelled to get to you
: (5 star for local > 1 star for 15,000km)
Availability : can anyone obtain this (5 stars for 'universally' available e.g. rice, 1 for 'ridiculously western' foods like new flavour skittles)
Sustainability : if everyone ate this product, how many people could the planet sustain (5 stars for 6bn or fewer > 1 star for 2bn or fewer)
I'm not suggesting these metrics would be easy to work out, but I for one would like to know.
(p.s. this labelling could be expanded to everything.. which would be a nice touch.. especially for label manufacturers).
footprints
http://www.myfootprint.org work out your own footprint [neilp, Oct 04 2004]
(?) Relentless Footprint Tracking
http://www.halfbake...ootprint_20Tracking [Shz, Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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Eco-balderdash. All those features are already reflected in the price. |
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Why yes DrCurry, persuasive point. American petrol ('gas') is of course so much more eco-friendly, which explains its cheaper price. |
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...OK so its not a food... |
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Loris: if you're drinking petrol, you've got more serious problems than can be dealt with in an annotation. |
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"Availability : can anyone obtain this (5 stars for 'universally' available e.g. rice, 1 for 'ridiculously western' foods like new flavour skittles)"
What about ridiculously eastern foods? Ridiculously Finnish foods? Ridiculously Brazilian foods? Ridiculously Maltese foods? Ridiculously Indian foods? Ridiculously Australian foods? |
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Another datum that is simple and fairly objectively verifiable...gross weight (including package). Gross weight minus net weight should be package weight. We may wish to minimize package weight. I don't know whether minimization of this parameter should be a high priority. |
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[UB] nah it's not. it's a plan to make people aware of the environmental costs of their consumption. It just makes sense for us not to shift lots of product around the world when for a lot of goods there is a local alternative.
I'm a big fan of proper free trade, but it's a balancing act. |
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Add to Treon's list one more metric:
Sustainability of natural resources
consumed to produce the product,
weighted by percentage of content. If
taxes were imposed on products based
upon these three metrics, the world would
be a better place. |
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If I could eat without paying any taxes, the world would be a better place. |
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Environmental Footprint Labelling? |
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- I actually envisioned a gigantic pair of lizard's shoes with "Godzilla woz 'ere" embossed on the sole. |
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Good idea --- just thought of it... :) |
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