Eat Local, Save the Planet

If you really want to lighten your carbon footprint, don’t just go vegan, go locavore. That means buying food locally to avoid the burning of fossil fuels entailed in long-distance transport by truck or rail.

The term “locavore” was coined in 2005 by a group of four San Francisco women, and won the prestigious New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year Award for 2007. The Locavores continue to encourage Bay Area residents-and people around the country-to only eat foods within a 100-mile radius of their homes during the month of August (and beyond). “Our food now travels an average of 1,500 miles before ending up on our plates,” they write on their website. Community-supported agriculture, farm stands, and farmers markets are good resources for aspiring locavores who want to eat within their foodshed, as are gardens and fruit trees from which you can harvest your own produce.

Jennifer Meiser, editor of the Eat Local Challenge website, suggests if you’re interested in become a locavore yourself, trying these 10 tips: