By Tori Sanderson, GROW Team Intern
Every time you open your fridge and pantry, you step into the global food system. Don’t believe us? Oxfam’s Food Transformation report shows us that the decisions we make every day have global impacts on the climate, agriculture and food.
In particular, our energy use can significantly contribute to climate change, which is responsible for extreme weather and rising food prices around the world. Unpredictable weather related to climate change is affecting crops, meaning that poor people can often not grow enough food to feed their families. This is contributing to the current world food crisis which is causing one eighth of the world’s population to go hungry.
For this month’s GROW Challenge we’re focusing on what you can do in your kitchen to halt the progress of climate change.
And you can do a lot: studies show that three simple actions can make a huge difference. By reducing the amount of water you boil, covering your pans while cooking, and reducing the heat as soon as your water is boiling, you can have the same positive impact on the environment as planting a tree and letting it grow for ten years. That’s a lot of bang for your proverbial buck.
But there are plenty of other really simple things you can do to make your kitchen as good for the earth as possible. Check out this month’s blogs for some things to try, great research on why we should care about climate change, and even some environmentally friendly recipes.
- How Your Kitchen Affects Agriculture & Water Supply: Tara examines the global impacts of climate change.
- How bad are microwaves for the environment? asks Bink in her personal encounter with this question during a “heated” argument.
- Top 4 Energy-Saving Appliances in the Kitchen: Check out how your kitchen compares with our list of the more environmentally-friendly appliances.
- Top 5 Reasons to Eat More Raw Food: Julie investigates the ‘raw food’ movement as a way of limiting energy use, and finds five reasons to ‘go raw’… at least sometimes.
- Cooking for the Climate: Some great recipes that are low in energy but big on flavour.
- Climate Change in Your Kitchen: Three low-fuss cooking styles that can reduce energy consumption.
This month’s GROW Challenge is to tell us: what are the creative ways that you save energy in your everyday life? Just email a paragraph to growchallenges@oxfam.org.au for your chance to win a copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw”.
Take the GROW Challenge
Each month from April to September, we will profile a different principle from the GROW Method with information, inspiration, recipes, and delicious competitions. Be part of a growing movement of people who want to use their everyday buying and cooking power to create sustained change in the world.