We do it every day. Through the magic of photosynthesis, sunlight is trapped by plant chlorophyll and converted into the proteins, fats and carbohydrates that sustain us. Pluck an apple in the autumn garden and enjoy the energy of summer sunshine locked in the sweet juice. Take an apple from the supermarket shelf in the spring – the juice is the same, but this apple was airfreighted thousands of miles from South Africa or California. Burning that jet fuel released the energy of fossilised sunbeams that fell to earth millions of years ago. We know the exhaust gases and particles contribute to life-threatening climate change and air pollution. That little airfreighted apple carries its ghostly share of these damaging combustion products embedded within it.

Think a little further. The infrastructure of food distribution. The aircraft, the runways, the lorries, the warehouses, roads, supermarkets – all those metals, ores, roadstone, rubber, cement and bitumen. All that extraction, quarrying, roasting, smelting and pumping. The little apple bears its ghostly share of these too. And that’s before we factor in plastics, packaging, marketing, advertising, heating and refrigeration – much of which is still powered by oil. A very rough estimate suggests that for every calorie of energy in our food there are at least ten calories of this ghostly embedded energy derived from the sunbeams of fossil fuels.

The head hurts thinking of the challenge of transitioning to a truly sustainable food industry. Eating local, eating seasonal, eating lower down the food chain (meat protein is particularly energy consuming compared with plant protein), reduced packaging – all sorts of things come to mind.

One thing is obvious. Food created at this high environmental cost must not be wasted. There is a new initiative which should be encouraged. It is called a Community Fridge. One has just been set up in Upton upon Severn. A fridge is put in a publicly accessible space, maybe a church hall or empty shop. It is stocked by local supermarkets donating produce that is still perfectly edible but is about to reach the end of its shelf life. It is free to anyone who needs it. That makes good sense, a real win-win in these challenging times when so many of us are struggling to make ends meet. So much better than the supermarket dumping the food into skips and paying to have it sent for incineration. How about a Worcester Community Fridge? Let’s save those sunbeams!

 

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