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Food retail is hurting our earth more than you think....
How much is food retail contributing to climate change?
How much is food retail contributing to climate change?
Food retail hurts our environment from the moment food is made to the moment it's thrown away. When crops are grown, they are sprayed with all types of toxic chemicals to keep bugs off. Those toxic chemicals mix with the runoff from rain or waterings and contaminate our drinking water. Then these crops are harvested and brought to grocery stores by different kinds of transportation that produce carbon dioxide and damage our atmosphere. The food products are then sold in plastic packaging that later gets thrown into landfills. Grocery stores also produce massive levels of Co2, with the storeage of food. After the food is bought by consumers, some of it doesn't get eaten and just gets thrown away, which just adds more to the landfills. All of this is harming us, our wildlife, and our earth's health in so many ways.
According to Brightmark, "Every year, the average grocery store emits 1,900 tons of carbon dioxide from the electricity and natural gas needed for operations"(Brightmark, 2023). This is equivalent to 360 cars emissions. According to the EPA, "the average grocery store emits 1,383 metric tones of CO2 per year from energy consumption alone" (Putman 2021). We think that food retail has a huge impact on climate change for many reasons on reason is when food gets thrown out, it goes into landfills and the rotting food creates methane, which is 28 times more potent than Co2.
"The pervasive use of low-value plastics found in consumer products in grocery stores amounts to 82 million tons of waste each year" (“Greener Groceries: Environmental Benefits of Farmers Market Shopping,” n.d.)
If we do not act fast our earth will end up looking like this...
"We will be experiencing new extremes. Each decade will be different from the previous and next decade. The climate future could be quite bleak." (Holdship, 2021)
See solutions page for ways you can prevent this from happening....
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