In today’s world there is an obvious challenge of feeding a growing population, while at the same time minimizing the global impacts of food production. The food that is produced in a conventional manner has a significant impact on the environment, through pollution, toxic pesticides and insecticides, etc. In fact, many of today’s systems for food production are compromising the capacity of Earth for producing enough food in the future. That is why more and more, smaller and even larger businesses are turning to the sustainable food industry (which includes production, distribution and sale), delivering a promise of a brighter future.
Why do We Need a Sustainable Food Industry?
As mentioned before, with this tempo and the way of growing and producing food, we are influencing negatively on the Earth’s capacity for future needs. Because of this serious exceeding the planet’s limits, the soil is changing and degrading. In the end, as more than 50 percent of world population lives in cities, and the global urban population is expected to grow about 1.84 percent per year, we can say that there will be no room to grow food and not enough people in rural areas for agricultural works.
How Can We Accomplish That?
By promoting the benefits of sustainable food and drawing to light everything wrong with the food we are eating and buying, we can make a few steps towards a better future. The things that have to be done are: encouraging sustainable practices for food production and consumption, improving technical knowledge about the environmental influence of food, more environmentally friendly pest control, reducing food waste and improving food policy coherence. A new trend that is promoting all of the above, while satisfying the need of businesses for affordability and lucrative production and retail space is cargotecture.
What is Cargotecture and How Can It Help Us?
Cargotecture refers to buildings made of shipping containers. It is a great way to use something that would otherwise be wasted as a precious asset in food production and sales. In fact, there are cargo containers adapted for farming in urban areas and there are the ones used as retail stores. The container structures are good for businesses, because the low costs and high mobility and great for the environment. There are many bright examples of how businesses have benefited from cargo containers.
Corporate Giants and Small Businesses Fighting for Sustainability
One of the great examples of how sustainability ideas can be turned into reality is the Starbucks cafe in Tukwila, Washington. It is a drive-thru made out of reclaimed shipping containers, with a number of features that make it eco-friendly. Here, you can read more about the Starbucks eco-undertaking.
Taco Bell is not lagging behind. Their pop-up store in Austin includes preparation section, storage, operation container and cooling facility. In Australia, the sustainability is taken to the next level with a village built entirely out of cargo containers. The Westside Park contains drink store, drive-thru coffee shop and a rooftop bar. The game of eco-friendliness is playing big style in US too, where the biggest shipping containers based restaurant is opened in Asheville, North Carolina. The Smoky Park Supper Club is built out of 19 cargo containers and it sits on a 1.8 acre (7,284 sq m) site. In Europe, there is a lot of talk about temporary restaurants assembled out of containers. One of them is the pizza restaurant in Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK.
As we can see, sustainable solutions for food industry is not knocking on our door, it has already entered the house and it is making significant changes. With the examples we are witnessing, it is becoming clearer that there is an obvious need for those changes and that it is not difficult nor expensive to make the whole industry eco-friendly.
