Green shopping

Warning! Trying to be green when doing your shopping can cause a major headache. The day even started well, I felt rather smug about walking my daughter to school and being able to do imaginary head shaking at the other parents in their cars (obviously I conveniently ignored the fact that it is quicker for us to walk than to drive).

The smugness was still there as I pushed the buggy down the road to do the shopping on foot, but within 2 minutes of entering the supermarket my smirky grin had completely disappeared. Before starting I had done a mental checklist of certain criteria to green up the shopping:

1. Look for organic produce,

2. Take the version with the least amount of packaging,

3. Think about the food miles, so look for stuff that hasn't travelled half way across the globe

I only made it to the fruit and veg section before realising that I might be on a mission impossible. Standing in front of the mushrooms I first went for the organic option, although the whole organic thing doesn't work very well with the out of money issue, but I decided 20p extra would be OK. Until it dawned on me that these organic mushrooms were placed in a non-recyclable plastic container and then covered in non recyclable clingfilm - completely 'un-green' and contradicting no 2 on my list. So I changed my mind and opted for the individual mushrooms that you choose yourself and then place in a brown paper bag, that way I saved packaging and 20p (and probably got a few chemicals included in the price..). But the BIG question raised was: why can you not buy organic mushrooms in a paper bag? In fact when I quickly toured the whole section ALL the organic produce was packed in some kind of plastic, and no loose weight items were available in the organic version. What is going on?

Next stop was apples. Obviously it was the same case of organic apples in plastic bags, but this time versus ordinary apples also in plastic bags. The real problem occurred when I reached point 3 on my check list - foodmiles. The organic apples had travelled all the way from New Zealand! Not exactly local produce. And to my horror I realised that none of the apples were in fact British, never mind Scottish. All the apples had been transported from NZ, South Africa or Argentina. Again, all I can say is: what is going on? I don't expect to find British bananas or Scottish pineapples in the supermarkets, but apples aren't exactly exotic fruits and surely there must be British farmers with apple trees?

By this point I was thoroughly disheartened, not to mention that my 2 year old was seriously fed up with my very slow moving shopping, so the rest of the shopping choices were made on the usual speed principal rather than the green principal. Not exactly a green success.
On the walk home I kept asking myself what should I do: should I start a campaign against the supermarkets to get them to take some responsibility, should I extend the vegetable plot in the backgarden to grow all my own stuff and be self sufficient (not a very feasible option, we would all be very hungry), or is the best option to find an organic farm shop in the area, even if it means taking the car for shopping?
It is definitely going to take me some time to figure out how to do green shopping.