Bananas by Olimpia Zagnoli

Bananas by Olimpia Zagnoli

This week Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli expresses her amazement at the carbon footprint of flying food around the world.

“Eat what grows in your garden or in your friend’s one or in your friend’s friend one,” says Olimpia. “Forget about horrific tomatoes with three eyes and pink zucchini from Mars. Be aware of every crumb you put in your body, you only have one.”

Why?

The big green ‘organic’ sticker on your asparagus means you may have missed the small print on the packaging that says ‘grown in Peru’. Air freighting fresh produce like asparagus when it can be grown in the fields around us is a real blow for the environment, so we should support local growers whenever we can.

How? 

‘How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’ is a great book by Mike Berners-Lee that helps us build carbon considerations into our everyday thinking.