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Comment by bratcomplex | Hacker News Reader

-take what you need. Need more? get more.

-eat within growing seasons. bananas in Greenland have a much larger distance to travel, loss of stock increases.

-aesthetics, a wonky looking apple is less likely to make it into the grocery store(even if taste and nutritional value is no different)

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I've heard that the "wonky looking" stuff typically gets processed into other products - apple sauce, e.g. and that some of those defects can actually increase the likelihood of a whole container developing mold.

https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/108605509324443238...

Baby carrots are cut from bigger ugly looking carrots is another example.

> bananas in Greenland have a much larger distance to travel, loss of stock increases.

Bananas everywhere not tropical have this issue, but they're also picked very green and ripened locally. Container shipping is very efficient, so I'm not sure if this is really a problem. It's even possible that if you live near a major port, bananas have fewer emissions than apples that were trucked 400 miles.

Container ships are more efficient than trucks when measuring CO2 emissions, not so much by other emissions. The problem is that they use high sulfur "bunker oil" fuel. At least with trucks there is a clear path to electrification via renewable means; I don't know that there's a similar path for electrifying container ships due to the logistics involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...

Sounds like removing trucks in the logistics chain as much as possible is the better option then? The trucks' parts and/or fuel (or crude) is also getting shipped using bunker oil fuel.

trucks do not replace container ships, bananas are boarded on ships at tropical countries and delivered to ports worldwide and then trucked to in-land warehouses.

It's worth electrifying truck transport because truck engines have to be reasonably compact and trucks generally don't go far from the electrical grid so can recharge whenever necessary (and possibly in future while driving).

For a container ship this is inverted, so I'd expect CO2-neutral shipping to use minimally-processed biofuel in a turbine power plant. Or nuclear, of course.

It’s worth moving back to trains. trucking took over partly because it removed the infrastructure problem from the truck company. Which left it to governments to (not in some cases) maintain. trains are way more predictable too.

definitely, tomatoes shipped from Mexico in some cases require less energy than green house grow in Quebec.

what’s more efficient? not eating tomatoes in Quebec.

> take what you need

Considering how bad many people are at managing their finances(USA credit card debt, I'm looking at you), it's no wonder people buy groceries that end up in the waste bin.

People in general aren't very good at two things:

Distinguishing needs from wants

and

Estimating how much of something is necessary to fulfill a need.

To be fair, shrinkflation of some products also now makes it hard to buy nice round amounts of things.

The recipe for a cake I made recently calls for 14 oz of maple syrup. I can buy it only in 12.7 oz bottles.

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