Buying local and organic produce could save the UK economy £4 billion in environmental savings.
The savings could be made if a greater number of people went to the shops on foot, by bus or bike, a study looking into the environmental impact of the weekly shop, has claimed.
Conducted jointly by the University of Essex and City University, the study’s findings were announced at a briefing at the Royal Institution recently and will be published in Food Policy.
Principal authors, Professor Jules Pretty (Essex) and Professor Tim Lang (City), found that consumers typically spend £24.79 on food each week, £7.53 of which is spent on eating out.
Their analysis found that the environmental impact of this typical weekly shop was an additional 81p per person through farms not using organic farming methods, 76p person through transportation from farms to retail outlets, and 41p person through consumers traveling to and from the shops.
They concluded that these environmental costs - combined with government subsidies to farmers of 93p per shopper per week - undervalue the true cost of the weekly shop by nearly 12 per cent.
The report claimed that if all farms in the UK turned organic, then environmental costs would fall from £1.5bn to less than £400m, saving the country £1.1bn annually.
It also claimed if all food is sourced from within 20km of where it is consumed, environmental and congestion costs would fall from more than £2.3bn to under £230m, a further saving of £2.1bn.
The report also said that if shopping by car were to be replaced by travel by bus, bicycle or walking, environmental and congestion costs would fall by a further £1.1bn, from £1.3bn to just over £100m.
Lead researcher, Professor Jules Pretty, said: "The most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat, as our actions affect farms, landscapes and food businesses.
“Food miles are much more significant than we previously thought, and much now needs to be done to encourage local production and consumption of food.”
Co-researcher, Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, added: “How far food travels is becoming more important for policy-makers and consumers alike.
“They are rightly becoming more conscious of food and health, but the environmental costs of food choice also matter. For example, fruits and vegetables traveling long-distance or short-distance may deliver similar nutrition or look the same, but environmentally they are poles apart.”
He added contrary to the frequent claims of anti-globalisation campaigners, the environmental impact of global "food miles" was found to be trivial, since most people's weekly shop is made up of food grown somewhere in the UK and Europe but extensively transported across it.
However, if food production were to cease on UK farms and all food were to be transported by air from global sources, the authors show that the environmental costs would rise by a staggering £19.7bn each year.
