How growing your own food reduces your carbon footprint

How, you ask?

This is something we've covered before, and something a lot of growers talk about fairly often - it's a major part of why people set up hydroponic systems in a home or business space. It's also part of the major conversation about the way our world works today, versus how it worked just a few years ago.

The carbon footprint phenomenon

It wasn't too long ago that nobody really cared how much gasoline or fuel you burned, and nobody had ever heard of a carbon footprint. But then, scientists started inundating us with information about melting polar ice caps, possible levels of sea rises, and the idea that this could really disrupt our food supply and our ways of life in coming years.

Suddenly, lots of people really cared about carbon footprints. Despite a major amount of reactionary, non-science blowback around the idea of ‘refuting global warming,’ carbon footprints have become a very significant way to measure our energy use, especially in the industrial world and wherever people actually monitor the ways that operations affect the environment.

Local food

One very simple way to lower a carbon footprint is to buy items that are made close to where they are consumed. This goes for everything from toilet paper to cars to Hummel figurines -- but especially to food.

Local food purchases are a win-win because while they do lower the carbon footprint, by eliminating those long miles driven by fuel-hungry semi trucks, they also deliver fresher food to the dinner table. That makes the carbon footprint just one essential aspect of how great hydroponics are for health and efficiency. Among the major reasons to grow hydroponics, small growers cite the following:

• reduction in carbon footprint
• food grown without processing for shipping
• money and fuel saved on fewer supermarket trips
• food grown in a self monitored environment -- less concern about contamination

In the end, the carbon footprint is just one big driver of hydroponics growing, but it's a very significant one, and one that we should look at very closely. Growing on a small scale in the local community, and eating or selling produce in that local community, offers benefits for both the grower and the consumer. When you know where your food comes from, you're more able to assess its health and nutritional value, and it can even be a lot cheaper because of less shipping costs.

Take a look at what major manufacturers and distributors offer to allow you to set up hassle free, easy hydroponic solutions for getting more of your food from close to home.