Ten Ways to Green Your Grocery Shopping

Here are ten key things to keep in mind for greener grocery shopping.

1. Plan meals before you go grocery shopping. You will be less likely to reach for frozen, processed, and prepackaged foods if you already know which recipes you will use to cook your meals. Take inventory of the ingredients in your pantry and keep a list handy of those you still need to buy.

2. Prepare more meals without meat. If you love meat, you don’t have to give it up, but easing up on meat consumption is good for your health and conserves resources for others too. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, enough grain would be saved to feed 60 million people. This is close to the total number of those who die of hunger-related disease each year! Again, with a little advance planning, you can prepare delectable, protein-rich vegetarian meals without even missing the meat.

3. Shop the perimeter of the store first. Fill your cart first with fresh food like produce, eggs, cheese, meat, and milk. This will leave less room for processed, overpackaged, and costly foods from the aisles.

4. Look for labels with third-party verification. Labels such as “natural,” “cage free,” and “free range” don’t tell us everything we want to know because they lack specific standards. For example, “free range” implies that a bird was free to roam when, in reality, it may have had very limited access to the outdoors. The best labels will have a third-party verification associated with them, demonstrating greater accountability and accuracy. Learning your labels will help you become an informed shopper. It will also help you get higher quality and more value for your shopping dollars.

5. Buy organic versions of fruits and vegetables most often contaminated by pesticides. According to the Environmental Working Group, the following are most affected by pesticides: peaches, apples, cherries, lettuce, bell peppers, grapes, celery, pears, nectarines, spinach, strawberries, and potatoes. Buying organic produce also helps keep you from contributing to water pollution through agricultural runoff. Remember the dead zones in the oceans from chapter 2? It has been estimated that as much as 25 percent of fertilizer spread on farmland each year is lost as runoff. When the nitrogen in fertilizer is not used in growing plants, runoff containing nitrates drastically affects water health. For example, each spring and summer a 7,000-square-mile dead zone develops in the northern Gulf of Mexico due to excess nitrogen, stripping the water of oxygen. Buying organic is not more “expensive”; rather, it’s an investment in your family’s health.

6. Buy 100 percent certified organic dairy products. Recombinant bovine growth hormone, shortened to rBGH (or rBST), is a genetically engineered hormone injected into dairy cows to increase their milk production. This hormone stimulates the growth of another one called IGF-1. These hormones have been linked to cysts as well as colon, breast, and smooth-muscle cancers. The FDA did not require human testing as part of the approval process. The United States is one of the few countries whose dairy farmers use rBGH, which is not approved for use in Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, or Australia. Some labels to look for while shopping include “Horizon” and “Organic Valley” milk and cheese.

7. Look for the “Fish Forever” seal. An estimated 75 percent of the world’s fish species are either being caught at maximum levels or are near collapse from overfishing. Populations of tuna, swordfish, cod, and halibut have been reduced by 90 percent worldwide. The “Fish Forever” seal from the Marine Stewardship Council indicates that fish come from a well-managed fishery with healthy populations that are not damaging ocean ecosystems. Alaskan salmon, for instance, are known to be sustainable since fish farms are not allowed. Also, fish like these are not in danger of being contaminated with mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

8. Buy in bulk. This will save money and limit waste due to excessive packaging. By many estimates, buying in bulk will reduce your annual grocery bills by a third.

9. Shop at your local farmer’s market or community-supported agriculture (CSA). Even though it’s not always organic, locally sourced produce is likely to be fresher because it hasn’t had to travel so far, which also means the carbon footprint is smaller. Because it comes straight from the farm, the produce tastes better and supports local economies. Also, it’s more fun to shop outdoors while speaking to the very people who grow your food.

10. Bring your own bags. Don’t wreck a great green shopping spree by toting home your groceries in plastic bags. Bring your own instead. Remember, it takes twenty-one days to create a new habit. Try to keep them somewhere visible in your car to help you remember.

We are what we eat, and we are also what we buy. If practicing greener shopping habits ends up costing a bit more, consider the payoff: better health and a better planet. With so little that we can control, buying green presents a genuine opportunity to vote with our dollars and make a tangible difference every day.

Anna Clark is president of EarthPeople, a sustainability consulting firm. She is an author, speaker, and featured blogger for Greenbiz.com and SustainLane.com. Anna lives in Dallas with her husband and two toddlers in one of the first LEED-certified Platinum residences in Texas.