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15 Fantastic Reasons why buying a weekly organic box scheme is good for you, your family, the countryside and our environment.
1. Taste the difference
A box-scheme delivers food harvested when it’s ripe, so it comes to you full of flavour.
2. Seasonality Supermarkets
give us ‘permanent global summertime’. Box-schemes bring us in sync with nature’s seasons.
3. Save a British family
farm Box-scheme suppliers get at least 40p in every pound. Supermarket suppliers will see as little as 5p.
4. Unadulterated salad leaves
Those ‘convenient’ pre-packed supermarket salads are doused in chlorine then preserved in bags with lowered oxygen levels, depleting vital nutrients.
5. Real value for money
A ‘value added’ £1.99 vegetable and pasta bake would cost you
only 40 pence to make with box scheme produce – and would be much healthier.
6. Reduce climate change
Air-freighted fruit and vegetables contribute 33 times more CO2 than UK-sourced produce. Box-scheme food is typically grown within 50 miles of your home.
7. Stop the beauty parade
Apples that don’t fit a supermarket’s exact colour specifications are ‘graded out’. Box-schemes don’t reject food on looks.
8. Maintain food diversity
You’re unlikely to find black salsify or Lady Godiva squash in Tesco, but you could well do in a box-scheme.
9. Reduce waste
Over 40 per cent of household rubbish that goes to landfill is supermarket packaging. Unpackaged box-scheme food is naked naturally.
10. Reduce traffic congestion
Centralised distribution systems mean that up to 40 per cent of
HGVs on our road networks are delivering food to supermarkets.
Box-schemes gather and distribute food locally.
11. Stop migrant labour
exploitation Box-schemes would see an end to the illegal trafficking of migrant workers in the UK, driven by supermarkets’ determination to keep prices low.
12. Community, not cash
crop farming Box-schemes encourage an ethos of self-sufficiency in their suppliers. Villagers in Kenya are left hungry in order to supply our
supermarkets with mange tout.
13. Stem the ‘splurchases’
A staggering 60 per cent of a weekly supermarket shop is now bought on impulse. Box-schemes stop you frittering your money away.
14. Support local economies
£10 spent on a local organic box scheme can generate £25 for the local economy. Supermarket profi ts are channelled into the bank balances of distant shareholders.
15. Lighten your shopping
load Weekly fruit and veg delivered to your door means the rest of your shopping could be done from local independent shops on foot.
From The Ecologist. Date:01/02/2006 Author:Matilda Lee: Fruit and vegetables as nature intended them, delivered direct to your door.
