Buying locally

Hi, Hilary here, with news of my New Year's resolution, which was to buy only food that is produced in Australia or New Zealand (I included NZ because it's closer to us here in Canberra than some parts of Australia). I took this decision, and dragged the rest of the family along with me, because at the end of 2007 I was horrified to find that some fairly traded rice I bought - thinking I was doing a good thing - had gone from Thailand to San Francisco before finally arriving on the shelf of the Oxfam shop here in Canberra. I didn't think that any amount of fair trade or supporting good causes like Oxfam warranted that enormous amount of travel. I also checked out the pantry and realised how many things were labelled 'Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients'. 

Of course, only buying local stuff made from only local ingredients does limit what we can eat to some extent. For example, chocolate is out, and we haven't been able to find an Australian brand of coconut milk. Otherwise, we have been able to find most things locally. It helps that we buy a lot of our food from the farmers' market and don't eat much processed stuff. We did hit a crisis this week when Bruce requested spiral pasta shapes and the only local pasta I could find was Beltana Gold fettucine (we're not good at cooking fettucine, it tends to clump together). We're also working our way through local teas (another thing we used to get from Oxfam) to try to find one that we like.

I've persuaded my family to agree to this for three months, which seemed less daunting than going for the whole year. Meanwhile, I haven't been able to stick to last year's resolution to buy nothing new. Already this year I've had to buy a couple of parts for my car and a new tyre for my bike, although I have continued to avoid buying new clothes or books. I've decided that maybe a more realistic approach is to try to make every purchase count. Thus, buying a new part for my car is okay because it's prolonging the life of the car, and the same for the bike tyre. I do feel that I'm at least much more aware of what I'm buying and have found that I get just as much satisfaction (if not more) from second hand things than from new ones.

Comments

[Olivia]

How 'bout this?

https://www.onlyoz.com.au

(they even have an organic page)

[Waste Wear Daily]

Great blog with a worthy goal! Have you checked out the riot for austerity?
http://riot4austerity.org/
There is also a yahoo discussion group. We are working towards reducing our emissions by 90% of US or OZ average. Lots of good info and support. Maybe we could learn some things from you.
Cindy in FL

[Rebecca Blackburn]

Hi Hilary

I'm doing the same thing as you! I have good news about chocolate - Cocoa Farm have planted a crop of Cocoa in the Daintree and soon will be harvesting it! In the meantime if you wanted to bend the rules slightly you could eat their organic Cocoa Farm chocolate which is currently made in Australia with imported cocoa. (oh yes - it tastes great too!)

cheers Rebecca