So you're going to eat more locally?   Why?

Ask 5 people and you'll get 5 different answers.     Some people are out to save the planet by cutting down on the pollution their food creates travelling to them.  

Others want to support their local economy and many are concerned about the purity of their food.  

I know for myself I choose to eat locally for two main reasons.     Firstly I love to cook and eat and secondly I don't like shopping as a pastime.    

When I cook I want to use the best quality ingredients because they taste best - not stuff that's been stored in a coolstore or warehouse and been lugged half way round the world - lets face us none of us are at our best after a long haul trip.

My aversion to shopping is a choice about how I spend my time - shopping or doing something more interesting.  

Onions are a good example - if I buy a 20kg sack of onions off the pick your own folks in March and hang them in my shed then I don't have to spend time buying onions until next March when the salad onions in my own garden have gone.

I also dislike food shopping because of all the packaging.  Local food producers use less packaging because their goods don't need to travel very far.

Often they use no packaging at all - yee ha - or they let me reuse my container like the Nelson Med Food Warehouse with their "fill your own bottle" local olive oil.

Thankfully one or two local supermarkets (ie. the ones with "Fresh" and "Choice" in their names) now make more local food options available, many with less packaging.

Anyway, my point about packaging is that you've got to do something with it.    

If I didn't make yoghurt each week I'd have to dispose of 52 plastic pots each year either by washing them out and recyling them to ease my greeney conscience or biffing them in yet another plastic bag to go into the landfill.    

Instead I have one yoghurt jar that I make a fresh batch of yoghurt in each week when I get my milk - simple and probably about the same time as it would take me to rinse out an empty plastic pot!

Enough about why I eat local - lets talk about why everyone else doesn't?