Triangle Sustainability Blog

In the North Carolina Triangle Region, local food is really hot right now. Restaurants in downtown Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill are buying up fresh local produce and meats. Small local farms are doing booming business. New farms are opening up. And some residents are making extreme efforts to eat only local food.

Of course, the Triangle isn’t unique in its newfound hunger for local delicacies. The national local-food movement has reached a higher level of maturity in the last few years, spurred on by Michael Pollan’s popular book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” And locavore — the term for those who prefer to eat locally grown food — was even named the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2007 Word of the Year.

So it’s settled. If everyone eats locally, all our environmental, health and economic problems will go away, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not quite so simple. While eating local has many positive benefits, we need to remember that consumption of local food is a means and not an end in itself.

“What communities want is a goal, like tastier food or a cleaner environment, or stronger rural economies, or protecting open space near cities, or social justice in inner cities,” noted Branden Born, a professor at the University of Washington and researcher on the local food movement.

For Triangle residents, those are probably all goals that we would like to accomplish. And we have many different policy options that could help us in reaching those goals. Local food is one option that can help in some cases, but not necessarily all the time. “Imagine a carpenter saying, ‘I use a hammer,’ but the project requires a saw and screwdriver,” Born said. “What is it that you really want — the choice of the tool or the successful completion of a project?”

One of the most commonly cited justifications for eating local is achieving the goal of environmental sustainability. Locavores argue that local foods require less energy to bring to market because they aren’t transported for thousands of miles, called food miles, before they get to the store.

But the food-mile argument ignores the energy that consumers use to go to purchase the food. A British study found that eating local doesn’t save energy in some cases, because local foods are typically sold at locations that are farther from customers than the neighborhood supermarket. So even though the food travels a shorter distance, people driving extra miles to purchase the food erases the potential environmental benefits.

In the Triangle, we’re blessed to have a variety distribution locations, such as local farmer’s markets and Whole Foods, which are central for many residents and so don’t require extra driving. But some hardcore locavores are taking things to the extreme, driving all over the place filling their feedbags. If their goal is eating local, they might accomplish it. But if they intend to help the environment, they’re way off track.

Born has dubbed these types of misdirected efforts as “the local trap.” His research points out that other assumptions commonly made about local food — that it is always fresher and more nutritious, for example — are also wrong in some situations. We fall into the local trap whenever we decide that local food is always the best choice, no matter what our ultimate goal might be.

In one Triangle town — Chapel Hill — the Town Council Committee on Economic Development is preparing an economic development strategy. One of the strategy’s goals is for the town to become “a community focused on creating a welcoming environment for green and ecologically sound businesses and developments.” Local food is listed as a potential method for reaching that goal.

That’s a great start, but now it’s up to both the council and residents to determine the proper way to support the local food movement. We should bring all the stakeholders together and have an honest discourse about how to make local food an entirely positive solution without wasting any of our limited resources, such as encouraging more grocery stores to carry local food.

Our diets might not always follow the locavore mantra of “think globally, eat locally,” but a sound strategy will help us reach our ultimate goals of saving the environment and enjoying fresh veggies.

With the advent of Christmas — or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or just the “Winter Holidays” — many of us are scrambling to find the perfect gifts for our friends and families. To me, finding the ideal present involves giving a gift that both has personal meaning and that the recipient will enjoy.

Of course, that doesn’t always work out — sometimes you just have to give up the search and buy the box of chocolates for your aunt because, well, who doesn’t like chocolate? But one idea I had this year was to give gifts that included an element of environmental stewardship. And I’m not the only one who’s linking the environment to gift giving this year. More than 40 percent of American consumers said they are willing to pay more for green gifts, a recent survey by Deloitte LLP found.

Making the holidays green isn’t necessarily easy, though, since many brands with eco-friendly labels tend to be misleading. Retailers are well aware of the surge in environmental awareness in the United States, and have correspondingly attempted to inundate shoppers with green marketing techniques.

So before I started shopping this year, I prepared myself with an important piece of reference material called “The ‘Six Sins of Greenwashing,’” a study of environmental marketing techniques including tips on how retailers try to bamboozle shoppers. Thus armed, I headed to Southpoint mall.

One of the first green products I spotted — a mocha-chip Bundt-cake mix at Williams Sonoma, which I had in mind for my cousin and his wife, who enjoy cooking — was certified organic by Quality Assurance International. On any foods labeled as organic, it’s always important to look for the certifying agency. In this case, QAI is known as a fairly reputable certifying agency that has been accredited by the USDA, so I felt some measure of success in finding my first green gift.

Several of my next green-gift ideas didn’t work out as well. At the Pottery Barn, I considered a nifty aluminum thermos to keep my father’s morning coffee warm. The thermos was advertised as helping the environment because it prevented the use of wasteful disposable cups. While there’s something to that claim, it’s important to remember that aluminum production is a dirty process that results in a considerable amount of carbon and sulfur pollution. And the “environmentally friendly” thermos wasn’t even made from recycled aluminum. I rejected it and moved on.

Next, I stopped at Target and found some Chesapeake Bay Candles advertised as organic that I thought would be a nice stocking-stuffer for my mother. Although the candles were branded as “pure and natural” and had earthy-sounding names like Green Bamboo Jasmine and Tonka Bean Fig, I couldn’t find any trace of organic certification. Although the company claimed the candles where made with soy-based wax for sustainability, no information was given as to what proportion of the wax was soy-based.

That type of ploy — where a product isn’t certified and the manufacturer offers little or no proof to back up their environmental claims — is one of the most common types of greenwashing. In fact, someone who I recently spoke to at a trade conference told me the truth behind his company’s “green” goods. His company makes acrylic surfaces, such as countertops, and takes their own unused products that haven’t sold, breaks them down and re-fabricates them into another product line labeled as recycled. This type of deceptive advertising serves as a reminder that when companies claim to use recycled materials, they should also provide information on what their products are recycled from and what portion is composed of recycled material.

So is it possible for well-intentioned consumers to see through all the greenwashing and really find environmentally sound products? Yes, but it’s not easy. And as I found out, it’s the most difficult when you are shopping at retail stores, since you’re at the mercy of labels and sales clerks.

Shopping online, however, makes it easier to find legitimate green products. There are a variety of Web sites that provide tips and vet green products for you, such as greenyour.com and ecomall.com. There are also sites like greenerchoices.org that provide more information about green labeling and evaluate the certifications found on many types of organic and other environmental goods.

Using these tools to fact check the claims about the goods you buy can help you get past the deceptive marketing to have a truly green — and merry — holiday.