EATING GREENER

Having to spend more time at home has changed how we eat and shop – and it could be good news for the planet

In an ideal world, we’d all cook from scratch with local, seasonal ingredients that come sustainably packaged.

But when a global pandemic comes along, that all goes out the window, right? The reality is, that hasn’t happened. In fact, it’s nudged us to adopt more environmentally friendly habits. Here are !ive ways we’ve gone green during the crisis

1 An untapped resource?

While it might be convenient, bottled water is bad news for the planet. Plastic bottles are made with fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming, but that’s only part of the problem. While most are recyclable, millions of bottles are thrown away each year in the UK. They then hang around for hundreds of years, polluting "ields and oceans, and endangering wildlife.

This is hard to justify when most of us in the UK have clean water ‘on tap’. We can’t take the kitchen sink with us when we leave home, but in our new socially distanced lives, that’s been much less of an issue. Can we continue to wean ourselves o# bottled water? According to Water UK, if one in 10 Brits refilled just once a week, we’d save around 340 million plastic bottles a year.

In April this year, Ocado even took the step of banning bottled water orders to free up more van space for essentials. Whether this policy endures remains to be seen, but at the very least, the pandemic appears to be prompting a rethink of how much we really need to be buying bottled water.

& At time of print, the government advice was to maintain a twometre distance from others, or at least one metre plus a face covering or other barrier. Please check the UK Government website ( gov.uk) for updated advice regarding coronavirus.