The Environmental Impacts of My Meal

Was my delicious dinner worth it?

What was my dinner composed of?

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•        Smart Chicken Leg Quarters

•        Steamed Green Beans

•        Grape Tomatoes

•        Quinoa Pilaf – quinoa, black lentils, corn, onions, bell peppers, and garlic

•         Coke Zero

•         Peanut Butter Cup Custard

Smart Chicken is from a company called, Tecumseh Chicken, which is located in Waverly, Nebraska. Tecumseh Chicken was founded on the idea of raising delicious chicken using sustainable practices and making sure to preserve natural resources. They chose their Midwest location based on how close it would be to the main feed ingredients for chicken: corn and soybeans. This was an environmentally good decision, because, “It takes much less non-renewable resources to transport packaged chicken than it does grain.” (Tecumseh Chicken) The carbon footprint of this chicken farm is drastically reduced because the grain-feed doesn’t have to travel far to feed these chickens. They are located in the center of the country and on Interstate 8. Although this location helps to make their carbon footprint smaller than the big, industrial chicken farms in this country, by allowing them to serve many locations with the least aggregate travel; they still burn gasoline and use Freon in their refrigerated trucks to deliver their product. They purposely located above the Ogallala aquifer and they aren’t near any surface water, so their operation poses no threat or risk to any water resource. 

Here is an informative video about Smart Chicken:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06T2...eature=related

 The green beans that I served at this meal were from a local farmer’s market. They were grown within 20 miles of the market and were driven there by the farmer. It seemed like a small operation, but I don’t know anything about the practices of this farmer. The beans were really crisp and tasty and I saw a bug on them before I rinsed and steamed them, so I assume that pesticides weren’t used.

I grew the grape tomatoes in my own backyard. They were mostly watered with rain water that was collected in my barrels. I know that there were no pesticides used in my garden. Composted vegetable waste is frequently mixed into my soil, so I also don’t use any commercial fertilizers. Picking them and walking them to my dinner table wasted no fossil fuels and posed no environmental threats.

The quinoa that I used to make the pilaf was purchased, in bulk, at the Outpost, which is about one mile from my house. According to an NPR article, “…almost no farmers outside of the arid mountains and coastal valleys of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile grow it.” So, probably and unfortunately, this quinoa had to travel a great distance to make it into my dinner. Many fossil fuels were burned to bring this seed such a long way. I also had to steam it for about 40 minutes, or so, on my natural gas stove.

The Coca-Cola Company is based in Atlanta, Georgia, but my can was probably produced at the bottling plant located in Brown Deer, WI.

Culver’s uses eggs and dairy from over 60 Wisconsin farms. So, while I only had to drive a few miles to the closest Culver's, their custard ingredients come in from all over Wisconsin.

All of the ingredients in my dinner came to me by way of truck, restaurant, Co-op, farmer’s market, or my backyard. I am unsure of where the quinoa was grown, but I can guess that it was from South America, making it the ingredient that traveled the furthest to get to me. I would consider the green beans and the grape tomatoes “local” because one was from a farm that was close by, and one was from my backyard.  The chicken came in plastic packaging that will end up in a landfill and the quinoa came in a plastic bag that I reused. The cola and the custard came in recyclable containers that were taken by the recycling truck, and thankfully, the other items had no packaging.