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Fruit & vegie boxes
Bridget Walsh on 17 September, 2011 | 
Visit your favourite search engine and search for ‘fruit and vegetable boxes London’ or something to that extent. I can almost guarantee you’ll have no trouble finding yourself a company or two to try. You choose a box ‘size’ and a delivery or pick up date and you’re away. You don’t really choose what you get in your box (though some companies will let you say, ‘please swap my beetroot for something else’ etc) because the whole point is that it’s all seasonal and local, and not your stock standard western veg contingent. You usually get an idea of what is in your week’s box before you it arrives, so you can plan for your meals and shop accordingly.
Your food will likely be organic, fresh, locally produced (or sourced from fairly nearby) and in season, and because the food is seasonal, you will likely get far more than what you could usually afford at a supermarket. That food is growing now, it’s just been harvested and it needs to be eaten - none of this snap frozen, internationally shipped, polystyrene packaged, cardboard food! The boxes you choose should provide you with a direct link and backrgound to each farmer and their crops, and generally remove a middle-man or two, which means it’s much better value. You know the ‘food-chain’ between your pocket and the farmers’ income is likely to be far shorter, so you are directly contributing to the conscious production and consumption of well produced crops.
To give you a real life example of a delivery scheme, one company I’ve used before is The Organic Delivery Company www.organicdeliverycompany.co.uk. We (as vegans) would generally order a Medium Mixed Fruit and Veg box once a week at £19.95 per box (and with delivery free for orders over £13.95, it’s a no brainer! Especially considering most supermarkets charge you for delivery unless you spend something like £75!). We can pick the delivery slots for our post code, which just means that they group deliveries in the same area together to minimise transport costs and carbon footprints.
If we ordered a box this week, it would include:
• Carrots(UK)
• Pointed Cabbage(UK)
• Courgettes(UK)
• Fresh Sweetcorn(ESP)
• Lettuce (UK)
• Broccoli (UK)
• Cherry Tomatoes(UK)
• Green Beans(NLD)
• Apples Braeburn(ARG)
• Bananas(DOM)
• Galia Melon(BRA)
• Guyot Pears (FRA)
Not bad for under 20 quid! These would be most packed straight into the box with minimal bags or wrappers. And what’s more, the driver will collect our empty box when he next delivers, giving us a direct recycle link back to the company. Every time a box arrives it’s like Christmas, and you get that special warm fuzzy feeling from knowing you’ve done something good.
A different option is a pick-up scheme, where you have set local points where the company delivers to, and you make your way there over a certain time frame to pick up your goodies. Because we live in Hackney, one of our local options is a social enterprise called Growing Communities (www.growingcommunities.org), who offer a pick-up based scheme. Their standard vege bag costs £45 per month, with a weekly pick up point that’s about 10 minutes walk from our place. These guys even grow salad leaves locally in Hackney - which means ZERO food miles. This week’s standard bag would include:
• Carrots, From Hughes Organics, Norfolk.
• Tomatoes, From Wild Country Organics, Cambs.
• Growing Communities salad, From Growing Communities, Hackney.
• Green onions, From Ripple Farm, Kent.
• Potatoes - Amorosa, From Ripple Farm, Kent.
• Garden peas, From Langridge, UK.
• Lettuce, From Wild Country Organics, Cambs.
• Curly kale, From Ripple Farm, Kent.
Again, not a bad option for just over a tenner a week. The point is that there are a LOT of options out there for you to start being a little more conscious when it comes to your fruit and veg. The supermarket is NOT the only way… in fact, it’s not really a good way at all. If you can’t make it to your weekly farmers’ market, or if you don’t have an organic green grocer just around the corner, fruit & vege boxes are where it’s AT.