Why Location Matters It’s easy to get bogged down in the semantics of how to be sustainable. “We should all … (insert proclamation here).” But each situation, each resource, and each location is unique. It’s about understanding your watershed, your nearby natural resources and how to protect them. It’s understanding the environmental costs of transporting food or flowers 3,000 miles, as well as the costs of growing the same product locally. I’m not saying one is better than the other, always. It’s complicated. A rose grown in Ecuador’s climate probably requires much less energy during production than one grown in a cold, northern climate; yet, we also have to calculate transportation impacts. Then, there’s the economy of these regions. That, too, needs to survive. According to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, institutional purchases of local food added more than $9 million to the Iowa economy in 2012. All of this is to say, when you’re acting in the name of sustainability, look around you. Know your habitat, your impacts. I’m not suggesting tunnel vision, or ignoring the plights of the rest of the world, but I am suggesting that stewardship—in all its forms—begins in your backyard. The challenge, as it is so often, is to look outward and understand the impact of each ripple.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 21:30:23 +0000
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