/travel/ireland/innocent drinks
via email, from Innocent Drinks:
We are trying to make our company a sustainable one, in the true sense of the word, and procuring locally wherever possible is a significant element of that. Currently, the majority of our fruit is sourced from Europe, and the majority of that from within the UK (eg apples, raspberries, blackcurrants, and soon to be rhubarb). But the reality of the way Mother Nature works is that fruits such as bananas and mangoes don't grow round these parts for love nor money and have to be sourced from further afield (India for Mangoes, Costa Rica for bananas).
It's worthwhile mentioning that our fruit always travels by boat or rail , so none of it is being air freighted, which is where the fuel burning get crazy. And as well as aiming to be the toughest enforcer of environmental and social standards where our fruit is grown, we donate 10% of our profits to support NGOs in the countries where our fruit is grown to help people who need it most, which I know has nothing to do with fuel miles but is all part of our aim to try and leave things a tiny bit better than we find them.
/travel/ireland/Beaches and Kumatos
My, it's been a while.
So, since last we spoke, I've been running fairly regularly, trying to get myself ready for some summer cycling -- hopefully a couple of trips around Ireland, and a bigger one to Scotland with Clare, and possibly others once flights get cheaper.
A couple weeks ago I went to a beach with Clare and her friend Suzanne and Suzanne's fellow Barry. It was a great day. It's the first time I've been at a beach in a while. I did a quick swim in the cold sea, and poked around in some caves. We ate a sandy lunch of cheese and bread and carmelized onion relish (yum!), with chicken for those that et it. But mostly I played in the sand, as I have since I could barely walk. I've always been drawn to sand - its flexibility, and the ephemerality of anything you build near the ocean. It's so obvious that no matter what I do with the sand it will be completely unrecognizable after just a few hours. It's like life, only faster.
The day after the beach, I went cycling south of Dublin, in Wicklow. I really like it there. I kinda screwed up getting out of Dublin, and went by the same damn mall four times. I made it out, though, and had a couple of climbs, and one of the most thrilling descents of my life..15 or 20 minutes cruising with traffic at 50km/h, just fast enough that your eyes start to water. I had been really low on energy for most of the ride, having had too small of a breakfast, so the descent was also very relieving. It was basically all downhill to my house. I'm hoping to do a similar route again this weekend with a visitor at work from Mountain View. He had lunch with me on my interview day, and we chatted about cycling, so it should be fun to head out with him.
I've been harassing Tropicana and Innocent Drinks about the source for their fruit, trying to find out how far they're coming from, and if they make any environmental or organic consessions, of if it's purely price-oriented. Tropicana, not surprisingly, appears to be purely price/availability oriented. Suffice to say that I've been thinking about the way I get my food as a place to reduce my environmental impact with little difficulty.
I bought something called a Kumato, which was reduced from 3.49 to 1.75 for a four-pack. They looked suspiciously genetically engineered, but Clare pointed out that the side said "Unique Colour and Flavour; Natural Product; Grown Traditionally." Turns out it's at least heavily bred, if not completely hacked. I think that's pretty deceptive wording, and obviously successful even against a shriveled-hearted sceptic like me. I guess I'm just not cynical enough!
I haven't tried one yet. I get some kind of satisfaction out of them being reduced and nobody apparently wanting them.
I recently finished Catcher in the Rye. It's interesting. It seemed simple in its observations at first, but subtly gained depth. I liked it. I liked the ending. I'm now back to reading Guns, Germs and Steal. Glad I took a break from it.
Had a family-ish picnic with Clare's friend Alice on Alice's family house, which reminded me of Patty's and Cathy's former places with a farmhouse and open land owned by others. I had severe horse allergies while I was there. I thought maybe I was over those.
My camera is borken, in that I lost the charger. I've ordered a new one, and it should be here soon. So no pictures from this period. Hah. So for going so long without blogging, I have given you the double-punishment of a very long post. :-)
Comments
Kim wrote
The Catcher in The Rye brings back memories of high school and OAC. It was so painfully depressing. The book, that is. Poor Holden Caulfield. I think you might enjoy reading Brown's Digital Fortress. It's no Da Vinci Code, but it's pretty impressive.
jesse wrote
I don't see how local procurement necessarily reduces your environmental impact. Sure the food has to travel a smaller distance (and maybe fewer preservatives are used) but the local process of growing the food might be worse, from an environmental point-of-view, that the process in some place farther away. Also, what about the potential for trade in agricultural goods to provide jobs for people in developing and least-developed countries?
Good to see you blogging again. I had rotated you to my "infrequently checked" bookmarks bar tab.
P.S. Digital Fortress is fun to read. You would probably find the technical aspects of the book quite funny.
jim wrote
As long as it's not using crazy gene-splicing, hacking up a combination of different related plants has been possible for a
long, long time; at least several hundred years. So that's certainly traditional.
This will make you cry: I buy one-day's worth of sweet peas in-the-pod from my local corner grocery. They come in resealable
space-age bags, and are shipped from (i kid you not) china. The girl two doors down grows them (quite well) but i haven't
had the courage to trade garden help for some of them yet.
Rob wrote
kim: I didn't find the Catcher in the Rye that depressing. I never really felt like things were going that wrong for him, though perhaps from the perspective of highschool I would have. He seemed to be trucking along okay, but having important decisions that he couldn't live up to being made by other people.
jesse: There is indeed a conflict between the hippy-ish fair-trade values, and the also-hippy-ish environmental impact values. Personally, I've decided that oil consumption is more important; what good is getting poor countries out of poverty, if the atmosphere is so changed that we can't survive? Besides, we're presenting a false goal for developing countries, since the whole world could never sustain the rich countries' level of consumption. It's overridingly important that we find a sustainable level for them to achieve.
When I buy mangos, I'll buy them fair trade. But when I buy apples, I want them from nearby.
jim: Yeah, it's not clear from the stuff I found on the internets whether it's actually GMO, or just generally bred. It's clearly done at an intensity that distinguishes it from past breeding, though. Mostly I'm pissed off by the opaqueness of the labeling.
also, nice url.
