23
September 2004
Nobody’s counting
Media launch:
7.30pm, Friday 24 Sept 2004, Sustainable Sustenance briefing,
WEN stand in Urban Harvest section at Consume This!, V&A
Museum, South Kensington, London (event runs 6.30-10pm).
Nobody knows how much food transport contributes to climate change because
nobody is counting, a new briefing on food transport reveals. Sustainable
Sustenance: food transport and the environment by Women’s
Environmental Network (WEN) calls for carbon dioxide emissions from
air and sea freight to be counted, and for a tax on aviation fuel, to
reflect the true cost of food transport.
Sustainable Sustenance will be launched at the WEN stall at
Consume This! the V&A’s September Friday Late
on 24 September, which is all about sustainable design in art, food
and culture.
Around a quarter of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
are thought to come from transporting food from growers to processors
and distributors, to shops and into our homes, says the briefing. But
amazingly, it reveals, air and sea freight emissions are not included
in the greenhouse gas inventory of the UK or any other country. Caroline
Fernandez, WEN’s food project coordinator asked:
“If
Tony Blair doesn’t know what is being done to cut food miles,
as he admitted in Parliament last week4, and the Government
doesn’t even measure their impact how on earth can the UK meet
it’s target to reduce (CO2) emissions by 60% by 2050?”
Women do most food shopping; demand for organic food is booming and
while only one in 20 conventional farmers are women, half the UK’s
organic farmers are.
Sustainable Sustenance offers shoppers tips on how to reduce
food miles, the distance your food travels from ‘plough to plate’.
It compares the journeys different foods make and the (CO2)
emissions they cause and answers the perennial question ‘which
is best, organic, fairtrade, local or seasonal?’
ENDS
Media contact: Liz Sutton, Press & Info Coordinator 020 7481 9004.
Notes
to Editors
1. WEN is a national membership charity that campaigns on environmental
and health issues from a women’s perspective. It was one of the
first UK organisations to campaign on food miles, publishing its first
briefing on the issue in 1997 and co-organising the first farmers’
markets conference in 1998.
2. Click
here to download Sustainable Sustenance free or for a printed copy
send 50p worth of stamps (or cheque made out to Women's Environmental
Network if ordering large quantities) to: WEN, PO Box 30626, London
E1 1TZ.
3. Consume This! is free and open to all. See www.vam.ac.uk/fridaylate
or contact Cathy Mason, V&A Press Office on O20 7942 2725. WEN’s
stand will be in the URBAN HARVEST! section - Slow Food London's Market
of Food for Thought & Food for Pleasure ( contact James Fisher,
Slow Food London, 07834 356153).
4. Hansard 15/9/04, column 1266, Q6 [188836]
