Sustainable Smoothie (part 2)

Have you been enjoying smoothies recently? We are just past the peak of our fruit harvesting season – pears, plums and apples. In the previous post about smoothies, we posted several questions to consider, if wanting to have a healthy and although otherwise sustainable smoothie, a “green” smoothie. Not because of the color it might have, but in the sense of having considered ecological aspects for its whole life-cycle and its footprint. To which level of detail and level of interconnections to other elements in the chain of processes and events necessary to produce our smoothie one wants to take this, depends a lot of the scope, scale and impact of the activity, project or system and available resources.Below are answers and thoughts in regards to the questions raised in the previous post. They are not exhaustive, but do give a level I am comfortable with at this point. More knowledge, experience and learning might change my thinking and might require a review of how I approach smoothie making and what is the best choice in my situation. Your answers might be different. I am focusing on some of the different aspects to think through when choosing a certain path of action, exemplified with this smoothie. If we consciously design an activity, a system, as small or large it may be, by applying ecological design principles and patterns, we will make a large step in the direction of creating a world that Thrives On Green.

• Are the fruits/ingredients in season?
  Obviously, a fresh fruit that is out of season needs to be somehow transported from further away to where I can acquiring it, maybe to a store or market, thus adding all the energy and related release of compounds into the environment needed for transportation additionally to what it took to get it ready for being transported. Then of course, even a fruit that is still seasonally available locally, which makes for short distances, might be brought in from far away in stores and compete with local prices. Or local stores do not even carry local fruits and produce. So every effort to buy it from a local producer reduces energy consumption, pollution and drain of the local economy.
• What quality are the fruits/ingredients I am using?
  Is it grown conventionally, which often includes the copious use of chemicals, many of which are toxic and the use of which has many other ecological, economic and social problems attached to them. If it is organic to the federal standard, it is a step up, even though the standards have been watered down to the original level of sustainable practices. For many small farmers the fees associated with being able to be “certified organic” the solution is to use standards better then USDA ones and let their customers know about their practices having a standing invitation to their farm and see for themselves. Regardless which of the many growing methods adhered to (good subject for another post) what is the nutritious value of the fruit? How many different amounts of all the enzymes, for example, are in it? This has a lot to do with the soil, general growing environment and variety. Is it ripened well? Has it been sitting on the shelf for long?
• Where do they come from?
  Is the fruit from the own yard, the block or town or form a local farm or further away? It has been published that the average distance a tomato travels from where it is harvested to my plate is 1500 miles in the US! Wow – what an amount of embodied energy. I am sure this is not much different for many of the fruits available in our town.
• Who is selling/providing them?
  If the seller is a local person, like the grower themselves or a locally owned, operated and managed store, the local economy benefits from it, the fruit travels the least amount miles, endures the least handling and is most likely the freshest. If Ia m the grower, in my yard, well – I know what practices and methods I used. In a sense I am not draining the local economy by growing my own food, but I am also not buying from someone else. If I am actually producing more than I need, I become a contributor to the local economy, if I sell the surplus or crate a social network when giving it to friends, family and folks in need.
  I know folks in our town that collect the many fruits that are not harvest, following on the ground and going to waste and give them to families that can not make ends meet. Or community gardens, that give a certain percentage of their crops, including fruits, to the local food bank./li>
• How have they been packaged, stored and otherwise “treated”?
  Is it offered in bulk or with some sort of packaging? Do I use my own reusable or used bags or some plastic or paper bag from the place of purchase. Packaging is in general an unnecessary use of raw materials and mostly ends up discarded. Even recyclable packing material is still a use of resources, that if it would not be used in the first place, would keep a lot of our natural environment pristine and save a lot of energy and avoid pollution. In many climates and at different seasons, storage of fruits over longer periods of time is necessary. There are so many ways of doing that and it takes some research to choose the most efficient and green method. Hopefully we will get back to that topic sometime later.
• What is the most energy efficient way to make a smoothie?
  The most energy efficient way is to let fruits grow in the wild or semi-wild environment and collecting it. Well, depends on how much effort one needs ot make for harvesting it. Of course that seems impossible for all of us to do. So, we can design growing systems that copy closely how nature works and have a much greater yield on as little an area as possible. Growing close by where it is used is the most efficient. OK, now we have the fruit right in front of us, brought into our home, taken from storage. So now we make the smoothie. Peeling, cutting, etc. By hand, using a knife. Throwing it into a mixer and blending it – using electricity or by hand. Yes, there are very functional hand cranked blenders. Pouring it out. Now instead of cleaning up the tools and dishes used immediately, we can use some trickle of water from the faucet and wash the smoothie remains from the side of the glasses and the blender to the bottom and drink that. Now washing up. The wash water, instead having it going down the drain, is great for watering plants, containing a lot of good nutrients – as long as we did not add things that are not suitable for plants.
• What is the embodied energy?
  Let’s say from the moment when we picked up the fruit in the store, until it landed in our stomach, this is all physical labor – walking from the store shelve to the counter, putting it into a bag, walking or biking home, taking out and putting it into a fruit bowl. Taking it from there and preparing it by peeling and cutting and mixing it by hand. Pouring it into a glass and drinking it. Taking care of the remains as described above, all done manually. Measuring that, is hard and I am  satisfied with the greenness of this approach.
  How about the “getting it to the shelf?” Oh, this was an apple, lets say, and I picked it from the apple tree in my yard (“a type of shelf”). Or a neighbor brought it or I gleaned it in the neighborhood, bought it at the farmers market or co-op, bought it from a store, drove to the store, maybe even ordered it and got it shipped. Then of course how was it handled, treated, stored and grown before all that? I think we can see how complicated this gets and a lot of researches need to think hard to figure out how much the actual embodied energy is. And, we have not even considered the embodied energy of the blender and other utensils, for the bag to carry it, the making of the storage bowl or other type of storage method, the shoes of the farmer who grew it in the field, all which contributed to the embodied energy of this apple!
  Wow, now I am on overload. If we go through this in ever greater details and see how all these things are linked together, we will start understanding how everything is connected and basically everything in the world and the universe has contributed to the amount of energy, materials and resources until it ended up in my stomach. And it continues. Now the smoothie contributes to building blocks of my body and they leave my body in various ways, ending up being absorbed and transported potentially long distances and eventually distributed all over the place. And the peels, seeds ended up in the compost and experience a similar fate. So, maybe you expected a number. I cannot give you one. Some researchers say they can – and I will trust them they might be able to. The point here is to the interconnectedness of our world and realize that the closer, the more local, using ecological sound design and methods is probably often the most energy efficient approach.
  One aspect of embodied energy and environmental concern is the type of tools, like the blender, knifes, cutting boards, etc. That are used. Just for one example, we made sure our blender container is made out of glass. It took us to look at garage sales for that, as stores usually only have ones made out of plastic these days.
• What can I do with leftovers and remains?
  Compost it, instead of putting in the garbage. See above how to rinse and drink, before the wash up. I always try to take of the sticker. I sometimes wonder how many tons of paper, glue and ink are used for these stickers. And how healthy it to have it taken up by the microbial live in the soils and eventually plants, etc. Anyway, the sticker can go into the office paper recycle bin.
• What is the most environmental sound way of cleaning up?
  See above, again. Wash immediately after use, use hot water and any kind of cleaner only if needed. I use some hot water and no soap for cleaning up the smoothie glass and blender.
• Does making a smoothie cause any social, ecological or economic issues?
  As you can see from above, the closer at home the fruit is produced, processed, used and dealt with, the less impact it has on humanity as large. Do you think by eating a fruit that is produced in a place by employed laborers that work very hard and receiving below survival rates of earnings without any support to social services, that have no say in how and what is grown, how things are marketed and where, does not have a social impact? This way of thinking can be easily extended into the questions of economic and ecological impact. It comes to that it really depends how the whole systems and its elements that lead to the simple act of drinking a smoothie works, set up, planned, designed.
• Is it healthy?
  Many studies have shown that organic methods of growing produce on average more nutritious less toxic food, with higher amounts of healthy nutrients. I am personally try to eat only organic, USDA certified or as practiced by growers I know and trust. Does not always work. And I try to avoid genetically modified foods. Even though I am not a food scientist I do have the strong impression that we do not know what we are doing by creating GMOs.
• Can it be made for eternity into the future without taking away the ability for future generations to do the same?
  If this question can be answered with a yes, it shows that we have achieved a high level of green living. What does it take to be able to do that? Well, I have some ideas around that, but this is for another time. Let me just tell you that some of the so called traditional methods of producing food, have endured thousands of years, for example in pre-modern China, but also all over the world. Today, there are still examples of highly productive systems that are 2500 old and working well today as they have when they started. And I do believe from what I know, that yes, making a smoothie under certain circumstances can be a truly sustainable practice for all coming generations to enjoy!

Now if you are getting tired figuring out how sustainable your smoothie is, maybe it is time to make one and drink it. If you subscribe to our mailing list, you’ll receive two smoothie recipes, one not so green and the other so very green! See and taste the difference!