The “food miles” challenge

There has been growing public interest in the concept of minimising "food miles" as a contribution to reducing environmental impact.

This is potentially a challenge for an organisation such as Traidcraft, whose work is fundamentally related to reducing poverty by importing food and crafts from the developing world, since for us the aim of reducing "food miles" cannot, of course, override our basic mission objectives.

It is also important to note that "food miles" is in itself a very generalised concept, which only accounts for one part of a product’s environmental impact (and often is not even the most significant element, compared with use of fertilisers, processing activities etc), and that there is a huge difference in the impact of transport depending on whether goods are transported by air, sea, rail or road, meaning that distance alone is not a good measure.

In this connection it is worth noting:

1.The majority of our food products and ingredients could not be sourced in the UK. The main exception to this is sugar, which we import. Sugar produced in Europe from sugar beet is available, however, beet production in Europe is only sustained by unfair subsidy arrangements and the UK does need to meet much of its needs from imported sugar. The UK production of honey is also insufficient to meet consumption making the import of tropical sourced honey necessary. Many of our "composite products" combine UK-sourced ingredients (such as oats) alongside products grown in the developing world. We do not actively seek to develop new food sources in the developing world, where a UK source would be appropriate and is available.

2.We actively seek to minimise the volume of freight transported by air, and the vast majority of our products are transported to the UK by sea. However, there are occasions when air travel is essential to meet delivery deadlines for customers.

3.The transportation of goods around the UK by road is probably as significant in terms of environmental impact as that of bringing products to the UK from abroad, and we are working with our carriers to find ways of reducing the impact of that stage of the transport cycle.

In developing our approach to improving our environmental impact, we have chosen to focus, at least initially, on the activities that we control directly ourselves, rather than on the activities of our developing world producers.

This recognises the fact that there are already environmental standards in place as part of the Fairtrade monitoring system (standards that are being steadily increased), which cover the vast majority of our purchases.

Our focus therefore begins with the shipping of goods from their country of origin, on our own operations in the UK, and on the impact of the UK service providers (such as parcel carriers) that we use to distribute goods in the UK. These are areas where we believe there is most to be gained from improvement.

Traidcraft accepts that carbon offsetting is not an ideal solution for carbon management and that reduction at source is the most appropriate strategic option. This is behind our focus on switching our electrical supplies and focusing on our freight activities.

However Traidcraft, as in previous years, has offset a significant proportion (75%) of its known emissions ? those relating to our direct transport activities ? and we are seeking more reliable data on our parcel carriers' impact with the intention of off-setting these also.

The analysis in 2006-2007 has not taken into account the full impact of our two small regional offices in Dhaka and Nairobi. We do not believe that these offices have a significant impact on our footprint but we hope to include them in data for 2007-2008.