A well-documented side effect of the coronavirus pandemic is the positive impact of decreased human activity on the planet. Venice's canals have famously run clear while city-dwellers in India can see the Himalayan mountain range in the distance for the first time in decades. This is the first Earth Day in a long time in which the planet might actually be significantly greener than the year before.
It would be easy right now to pat ourselves on the back and bask in the glow of this environmental silver lining while queueing up another Netflix show, but there’s always more that we could do. A few months of lowered economic activity isn’t going to undo the changes wrought by humans for more than a century since the Industrial Revolution, and in the past, pollution levels have continued their climb after a recession ends.
So what can we control when we’re stuck at home, quarantined from the wider world thanks to COVID-19?
One simple answer is our food. But, like most things that seem simple on the surface, the reality is more complex than most people care to think about.
Our food system is one of the single most powerful forces driving environmental change. Explore the system a bit and you’ll find wildlife habitat loss, mass pollinator deaths, depleted reservoirs, animals pushed to the brink of extinction, plants modified to be nearly nutritionless and no small amount of pollution from transporting that food all over the world. Then, a large percentage of that food ends up being wasted.
None of us are going to change those things individually, but the choices we make about what to eat at home have ripple effects that are probably larger than you think. The food supply chain is smart, versatile and flexible. With enough people taking incremental steps to reduce their impact, the food system will shift to meet consumer wants and needs.
So what concrete steps can we take from our quarantined households to continue this unlikely trend towards a greener planet?
First, order takeout from local, farm-to-table restaurants - and ask them to skip the disposable flatware and napkins. You’re at home, and your takeout meal will only be enhanced by using real plates and silverware. There’s no need to throw out all those single-use items. These days, some delivery services are automatically leaving out disposable cutlery unless it’s specifically requested, so the anti-plasticware trend has already gained traction.
In ordering from a true farm-to-table restaurant, you’ll not only be supporting a local business - you’ll be supporting local farms, too. Smaller local farms tend to have much less environmental impact than their industrial counterparts, and they are more likely to use products like organic fertilizer and responsible farming methods like crop rotation and avoiding pesticides. These greener farming methods also tend to happen near the locale where the final product is cooked and eaten, so less energy is expended transporting all those crops. Smaller, local farms will probably yield tastier, more nutritious produce, too.
In today’s dining scene, farm-to-table restaurants are now table stakes, but they’re not all created equal. If you’re curious about where a restaurant sources its ingredients, they’ll usually be listed on the menu or website. Chefs and farmers tend to develop deep, mutually-beneficial relationships, so they like to brag on each other. And when a farmer has a unique or especially high-quality product, chefs will race to scoop it up before their competitors can. The ultimate winner is the diner, who is able to appreciate a spectacular ingredient lavished with a chef’s attention.
Another way to help the planet through your food consumption is to make it more efficient by creating less waste. Food waste isn’t just bad for your wallet, it causes major problems in landfills, where the organic matter decays, produces methane and can cause the landfill to spontaneously smolder for years.
If you have trouble over-ordering or hate to eat leftovers, your food scraps can still find a final destination other than the trashcan: the compost bucket. Composting may seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be a scary, hippie-commune activity. The simplest option might be joining a composting service, in which you collect food scraps in a bucket, leave it outside your door and have someone else whisk it away to some distant commune that's not in your backyard. When you need compost for your garden, just call up your service and they'll drop off bags of deeply nutritious natural fertilizer, created by you and your fellow composters.
If you'd rather get a little more hands-on with your food scraps, there are several options for you including purchasing a composting bin or building a worm box. A bonus is that you can also use a compost pile to dispose of paper waste, including some restaurant takeout boxes and flatware, so you'll be able to get rid of that stack of old newspapers.
Finally, it’s important to understand that your food choices do matter. As we’ve all witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic, grocery stores have finely tuned supply chains that can be easily disrupted. There’s a reason you can get a master’s degree in supply chain engineering from Georgia Tech: the supply chain is a precise, tightly-choreographed system and a powerful instrument of profitability for grocery chains. When you choose fresh spinach on the stem instead of in a bag, the supply chain feels it. When you decide to try cooking meals from scratch instead of buying frozen entrees, the supply chain twitches. Thanks to decades of customer data and new technological insights into customer behavior, the grocery supply chain, which makes up a huge part of the food system, is more responsive than ever. With your simple choices, you can force it to respond in a greener direction.
It takes a real optimist to see this year’s uniquely green Earth Day in a positive light as we navigate the shifting sands of the coronavirus pandemic, but only a pessimist could see clear water in Venice and frown. A realist looks at the amazing developments in the natural world these last few months and knows that we have to do more to keep this momentum.
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