I just had a rather disgusting fibre/snack bar for breakfast, along with a tepid cup of weak airport coffee. The bar was by Nature’s Path, based on my favorite colon-blasting breakfast cereal (Optimum), and the brownish pee-water was from Tim Horton’s, Canada’s big donut chain, where I used to buy mid-morning break coffee during my first office job. In both cases, I was clearly consuming something other than organoleptic delight, and instead bringing into the self a lot of dissociated meaning and values, according to that branding stuff I’ve just been studying.

But that’s another story.

After this delightful morning nosh I separated the residuals I was left with into trash (bar wrapper and stir stick) and recylclables (paper bag, napkin, and cardboard coffee cup). But the Vancouver airport only offers recycling bins for newspaper and glass/plastics (the latter empty, since I write this blogpost post–gel and liquid travel threats). I ended up chucking everything in the regular garbage can, along with a lot of newspapers and magazines that other passengers seemed to have accidentally mis-deposited (if we’re being generous for a moment). There’s a lot of waste at airports, and a huge amount of energy consumption, which jibes oddly with my current headstate about sustainability and pulito-ness and small earthly footprints.

I’m worried about the externalities of international travel as I hop, skip, and jump from Milano to Boston to Vancouver to Vancouver Island, back to Toronto, Halifax, New York, Shannon, Bra, London, Bath, Aberystwyth, Bra some more, and ultimately Torino, in pursuit of research and synthesis on farmers’ markets practices. And I’m worried as my two UNISG colleagues Gigi and Linda do the same. And as 5000 delegates to Terra Madre prepare, at the end of October, to do something very similar as well.

In seeking to connect food communities so that a more buonopulitogiusto world order can be created, we’re really burning the fossil fuels. We love Local, but the dislocation of coming together to talk about it is kinda contradictory. I’m not saying we should all stay home and IM each other. (I know that’s not as effective in relationship building as being physically together, and I know that not everyone has online access or comfort levels.) But there’s a big cost to what we’re doing—of the environmental sort—and I think that takes a toll on Terra Madre’s credibility.

What to do? Once again, I think we need to do some problem solving—not shake our heads and worry about it, or make wittily snide comments, or just keep on making carbon emissions, but really try to solve this. And if there isn’t a whole solution, then perhaps some ideas on harm reduction. More walking and less driving in Torino. More buses and fewer cars. One napkin instead of two to wipe our fingers, and no bloody bottled water! Pitchers and washable, reusable cups, please. That’s small stuff, but I don’t know the logistics of the event well enough to offer ideas on big stuff. So over to you, Slow Foodistas: how can we reduce the externalities of TM this year?

If we’re gonna chew up resources in the very worthwhile pursuit of making Terra Madre happen, let’s at least be really conscious of every decision we make individually, and keep our footprints from trampling to death those biodiverse grass stalks beneath our collective toes.

--passenger Szanto, now boarding flight AC 711