From the Midwest to Arizona - Mackenzie's journey


Greetings,

My name is Mackenzie Glenn and I am in my final year at Arizona State University in the U.S., completing a degree in Sustainability with a concentration in International Development; I have a huge interest in modern energy science, but my greatest passions lie in aiding developing regions.

My university is located just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, in the Southwest region of the United States. And with the exception of the northern half of the state which is more mountainous, this region is characterized by an arid, desert climate that can reach temperatures of over 120ºF (49ºC) during the summer months and receives very little precipitation.

Phoenix is located in a valley in the northeast portion of the Sonoran Desert, an ecoregion which stretches from central Arizona to the northwest corner of Mexico. It is considered the hottest desert in Mexico and in the United States is second only to the Mojave in California.

While I have spent the better part of the last five years here in the desert, I grew up about 1,500 miles inland in a region we refer to as the “Midwestern” United States, but it is technically in the center of the country - it’s referred to as the Midwest only because it was given this title in the 19th century prior to the United States’ expansion to the Pacific coast. My hometown in the state of Nebraska is characterized by a Tallgrass Prairie ecoregion where the soil and humidity allow it to prosper as a predominantly agricultural region, supporting the growing and harvesting of fresh corn and soybeans each year.

While my immediate family didn’t farm, this was something that I was still close to growing up, and we planted a garden and grew our own produce each Spring. We lived in a more densely-populated neighborhood when I was young but used chicken wire to fence off a section of our backyard and planted cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, rhubarb, and such. The rabbits would always find their way in somehow but we always had enough for B.L.T. sandwiches and rhubarb pies. After the farmers’ Fall harvest we would also purchase sweet corn from the stand at the gas station on the corner, and husk and freeze it for the wintertime.

It is these fond memories of my childhood and the values they caused me to develop which drove my interest not just in gardening but in sourcing my food internally whenever possible.

When I moved to the Southwest I was eager to carry on this tradition, but was fairly naïve. Though I’d heard rumors about the desert’s climate and incredible heat index, nothing could have prepared me for my first summer here.

While sitting in the sun, the thermometer in my car could often record temperatures of nearly 140ºF (60ºC) with almost zero humidity. The first garden I tried to grow here shriveled up like a raisin. I learned pretty quickly that growing vegetables in a hot, desert environment would be a fragile and delicate process, and one riddled with failure.

So for a long time I resorted to attempting to grow everything indoors, but I found this was more a psychological decision than an environmental one. I grew anything from bell peppers to cucumbers to snap peas to tomatoes, and even herbs like basil, lemongrass and lavender. Some survived, but most failed.

I’ve learned that being able to control a garden’s temperature and exposure to light is certainly satisfying, but only part of the equation. I’m more interested now in learning which species grow best in which regions. To live sustainably requires adaptation and, frankly, submission to one’s environment. I’ve learned this the hard way! I’m hoping with practice and some success in my life I’ll be able to have a few acres of land where I can grow my own vegetables, raise some livestock, and plant a fruit orchard someday. Until then, I’ll have to continue to purchase my groceries from the store down the street and do what I can to minimize my ecological footprint in this area in other ways.

• Some of my indoor plants. Genovese and Thai basil, tomatoes, and philodendrons.

The BBC reported earlier this year that the food we purchase has a sizable impact on our individual carbon footprints to the point that it can account for up to 30% of a household’s greenhouse gas emissions, noting that “the entire food system - which includes the production, packaging, transportation and disposal of everything we eat - accounts for 21-37% of all human-produced greenhouse gas emissions,” and in less than thirty years “our food could account for almost half of all carbon emissions released by human activity” if the proper changes aren’t made moving forward.[1]

If you’ld like to calculate your environmental impact from the food you eat the BBC’s calculator is here.

This is largely due to the extensive and complicated life cycles of virtually all commercial food products. From the carbon emitted not only in transporting and distributing a product but also that which is released during the extraction, production and waste processes, the complexity that comes with calculating and quantifying these processes can be inexhaustible. 

Although my diet is clean and fairly simple, and when I shop for groceries I purchase local and organic products whenever possible and avoid heavily processed foods, I’m aware that the way I’m forced to purchase food is still not sustainable.

While virtually everything I purchase is grown or harvested in the United States, in attempting to research the origins of the products in my refrigerator and pantry I found this much more difficult than anticipated. Aside from finding out the bread I buy travels nearly 1,000 miles from a state in the Pacific Northwest U.S. this is information that I found was generally inaccessible, or difficult to find.

However, Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford and Thomas Nemecek of the Agroecology and Environmental Research Division in Zurich, Switzerland, by studying the “environmental impact generated by the production of [forty] foods that represent the majority of the world’s diet,” were able to develop a calculator which is able to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the processing, packaging and transportation of products in units of kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents.

The two “assessed the greenhouse gas emissions that come from the production processes involved with these foods along with their corresponding land and [freshwater] usage,” and “consolidated data from various environmental indicators [including] 38,700 farms, 1,600 processors, packaging types, and retailers,” in order to formulate a reliable algorithm.[1] Chicken, avocados, bread, and cow’s milk are four products I eat regularly throughout the week, and their calculator determined that my consumption of just these four foods at least five times a week produces a carbon footprint of more than 423 kg of CO2  annually, equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide produced by driving a car more than 1,080 miles. This portion of my diet also requires enough water to fill up almost 800 bathtubs, and enough land to fill nearly seventy parking spaces. And this probably isn’t even half of what I consume over the course of a week! My footprint is surely much higher.

Levels of food waste are of paramount concern and account for a huge portion of the CO2 emitted across the supply chain, as well. The average American household produces an average of 20 lbs (roughly 9 kg) of food waste each month[2] resulting in a nationwide carbon footprint that exceeds that of the entire airline industry.[3] I live with two of my three sisters and the garbage in our bin is collected every Friday morning and dropped off at the State Route 85 Landfill outside of town.

Photos

The landfill, SR 85, is owned by the City of Phoenix and consists of over 2,500 acres of land west of the city, and “an average of 3,500 tons of material [is] delivered to the landfill” every single day.[4]

While obviously not all of this is considered food waste, I know that most of what we ourselves contribute to it technically is.

We don’t waste much actual food and we recycle everything we can, but I’ve found it’s often the packaging that piles up in our bin. Apart from the glass jugs of milk I buy locally and return to the store, I find myself having to dispose of empty plastic containers and other packaging constantly. And until I have the means to source my own products, which would eliminate the need for and use of unsustainable materials, I’m interested in finding methods for reducing my family’s food waste in this way.

How gratifying it would be to not have to roll our bin down to the curb because we don’t have enough to throw out!

Until I am cultivating my own corner of the world, I believe that by making more conscious choices at the market in terms of which products I purchase and where they are sourced, I could reduce our household’s footprint significantly.

The state of Arizona is already well below the national average in terms of landfill diversion, meaning the average household in Arizona sends far more waste to the landfill each year than the rest of the country. San Diego, a coastal city in California only five hours west of Phoenix, boasts a landfill diversion rate of more than 65 percent, and Los Angeles has achieved up to 76 percent. In 2015 the city of Phoenix’ residential landfill diversion rate was only 20 percent, and this does not account for the amount of waste that is dropped off at the landfill directly by “landscapers, construction crew and [other] residents,” which, according to data provided by the city, would make this number closer to 14 percent. This can be attributed to a lack of economic incentive, an absence of mandates, and an abundance of open space in the desert for landfills.[5]

• Containers for cow milk

Moving forward, I think it’s going to be important to weigh not only the environmental costs of my purchasing and waste disposal habits, but also the actual contents of my diet, as well.

For instance, it may be more environmentally conscious to purchase milk that is produced locally and distributed in glass containers that can be returned and reused. However, according to Poore and Nemecek’s calculator, if I were to eliminate cow’s milk from my diet completely, I could reduce my annual carbon footprint by over 150 kg and my water use equivalent by more than half. The same is true when it comes to my consumption of avocados, which are typically exported to the United States. If I were to stop purchasing these I could potentially reduce my footprint by an additional 100 kg of CO2 each year.

The amount of waste we could personally divert from our home with the adoption of a composting routine is also significant.

Princeton University conducted a study last year which found that “composting organic waste versus landfilling … can reduce more than 50% of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions,” which, over the next thirty years could amount to over two gigatons of carbon dioxide.[6] This is equivalent to more than two billion metric tons, 4.5 trillion pounds (2,041,165,665,000 kg) or 20,000 fully-loaded U.S. aircraft carriers.[7]

The benefits of compost on the health and quality of soil are also impressive. While it hasn’t gained substantial popularity as I can honestly say I’ve never seen one on the street before, the City of Phoenix participates in a “Green Organics” program through which residents can purchase a special bin for their organic waste, including organic food waste and yard waste, “such as grass clippings, twigs, branches … shrubs,” and even weeds. The bin is picked up each Friday with the others. Perhaps it hasn’t gained much traction because residents are charged an additional monthly fee in order to have the bin, and this is counterproductive to the economic incentivization sustainability often requires. However, for residents interested in composting on their own at home, they do offer smaller recycled and repurposed bins for a small, one-time fee.

I am picking mine up this week!

• Here I go! My compost container


Sources:

[1] BBC. (n.d.). Calculate the environmental footprint of your food. BBC Future. Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210204-calculate-the-environmental-footprint-of-your-food.

[2] How much can composting help to reduce my carbon footprint? The Eco Guide. (2016, September 18). Retrieved November 13, 2021, from https://theecoguide.org/how-much-can-composting-help-reduce-my-carbon-footprint.

[3] Kaplan, S. (2021, March 1). A third of all food in the U.S. gets wasted. fixing that could help fight climate change. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 13, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/02/25/climate-curious-food-waste/.

[4] State Route 85 landfill. City of Phoenix. (n.d.). Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.phoenix.gov/publicworks/garbage/disposable/state-route-85-landfill.

 [5] Coppola, C. (2015, September 18). Recycling reality: Arizona Cities send far more trash to landfills than U.S. average. The Arizona Republic. Retrieved November 13, 2021, from https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/09/18/phoenix-arizona-recycling-behind-nation-average/72408854/.

[6] The Trustees of Princeton University. (n.d.). Data: 2/14 – 2/28. Princeton University. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://scraplab.princeton.edu/2020/03/the-composter-how-much-can-composting-help-in-solving-the-climate-challenge/.

[7] NASA. (2020, March 12). Visualizing the quantities of climate change – climate change: Vital signs of the planet. NASA. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2933/visualizing-the-quantities-of-climate-change/.