Ideal Bite

Do you buy less to save more?

10.01.2008

Submitted by tmeronek on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 12:23am.

Living

The Bite:

Time, that is. The express line might save you a couple minutes right now, but if you fill up your cart, and later, your fridge, you'll make fewer overall trips to the store, and save cash, energy, and hours in the process - showing that less isn't always more.

The Benefits:

(Check)standing up to pollution. Half the pollution it takes to transport your food comes from your drive to and from the store (the other half comes from farm to distribution center to store).
Queuing up home energy savings. Both your fridge and freezer are more efficient when you pack them full (but not so full that cold air can't circulate). In a power outage, they'll even hold the temp for twice as long as half-full ones.
Even less time than self-service checkout. Even the time you spend parking can make you think twice about going to the store for just a couple items.
Line-ing your pockets. Save cash on electricity bills and gasoline.

Personally Speaking:

On a particularly grueling trip to her fave grocery store in SF, Rainbow Grocery, it took Heather 20 minutes just to park. After which point she called up Jen to say, "I'm moving to Bozeman."

Wanna Try:

Stock up the fridge - but be smart about your produce choices so nothing spoils before you get a chance to eat it.
Fridge empty? Pack it with water-filled containers like pitchers or water bottles; a fridge full of cool items retains the cold temp better and keeps efficiency high.

Cocktail Fact

The average supermarket contains about 30,000 items - about 2.5 times as many as it did 20 years ago.

Bang For The Bite

If 10,000 Biters cut their number of grocery-shopping trips in half, in a year we'll save enough gas to drive a car round-trip from SF to Bozeman, MT, 1,365 times.

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