Hey all,
Recently I’ve been trying to work on purchasing more products made here in Canada as opposed to down south or overseas, reason being to help decrease my environmental footprint, as well as to keep my money supporting businesses based in Canada, especially with the tariffs that might be coming in the near future.
I was curious if there were some good tips to help find products made within our borders. Some stuff has been easy, like swapping from Silk to Earth’s Own for example due to labeling on the package that states where the product was manufactured, but other stuff is a bit of a pain since it doesn’t seem to indicate where the product is manufactured or at the very least if it was imported, just where the company’s head office is located.
While my main concern is with groceries since I’ve been trying to purchase more second-hand as of late, I was curious as to what some good all-around tips are for finding Canadian products. I’m willing to spend a little more if needed, I prefer to bank my money in my morals and not in convenience.
For food it’s pretty easy just because we’re in an extreme climate (pacific coast excepted). In season you get BC fruit and the like, but that’s usually labeled, and otherwise anything that rots is going to be coming from elsewhere. If it’s something relatively shelf-stable that could grow here, it’s probably local, just because shipping still costs something and we’re a net exporter. The main exception I can think of are corn products because of US subsidies. I know less about meat.
Maybe there’s some way to distinguish between coldchain products from the Americas and products from further afield. I haven’t really looked into it, though, because I’ve just focused on using less produce in general.
Anything non-coldchain is significantly harder to figure out. You can buy carbon offsets, which honestly seems way easier to me than reverse-engineering the global supply chains.
Are there any reputable offset providers that have been audited to ensure they are actually saving the value they claim? I like the idea of offsets but I feel it’s open to be rife with overstated savings claims.
I don’t know, but the thing to look for is that there’s an identifiable way carbon is being removed from the atmosphere (not just not released), and that someone you can identify and trust is on the ground doing it. One I remember seeing when I was shopping around is an academic who was grinding up basalt and spreading it in Scotland - I feel pretty safe with that.
Harvard Business Reveiw goes into more detail about how the current system is broken and could be fixed. I’m a bit unclear about whether they think permanent accounting of the carbon or just reasonably foreseeable fixation would be better - they kind of talk about both - but the former seems most foolproof.