Buying local

For those of you who don't already know, I'm a bit of a tree-hugging hippy. I recycle obsessively, constantly bemoan my lack of a compost heap - I am currently toying with the idea of an indoor wormery, but have rather a small room - and try to save energy like there's no tomorrow (which, metaphorically, there won't be the way the world is going, but that's a rant for another time). And I care about such things as food miles (though probably not nearly as much as I should do - and I really hate the term). So between minimising energy wastage with food transportation, supporting local producers and a belief that local, small producers will often output better quality produce, I like to buy things sourced locally where possible.

It's an uphill struggle though. Earlier this week, I tried to buy a particular high powered LED (a Seoul P4 U-bin cool-white emitter) in an attempt to upgrade my bike light. So I found a UK supplier - Farnell, based in Leeds - who would sell me the LED I wanted. Now, it's a single LED, but it's not cheap - I was trying to buy £7.89 worth of goods, not 20p. But they have a minimum order charge of £20 if you want to put it on a credit card - ostensibly for their free delivery. I would have been perfectly happy to pay an extra pound or two for delivery, but they wouldn't have it. Their FAQs state that they accept BACS or cheques as payment too, but when I rang them up, they said I would have to make the £20 minimum order charge. So after a little bit of searching, I found DealExtreme, who are based in Hong Kong. It turns out, they will send me the exact same LED, with no minimum order charge from across the other side of the world. Their price? $5.12, with free shipping. That's about £3.54 at current rates. So even leaving the minimum order charge aside, that's under half the price. I hate ordering from across the globe when there's a UK alternative, but the price difference is excessive - and in this case at least, that LED is more likely than not manufactured in Taiwan or nearby anyway, so the overall distance covered by it is probably rather similar from either supplier. But the point still stands.

Another thing that irks me on this note, is how difficult it is to find locally produced honey. If you go to a local farm store, it's dead easy, but I will admit that usually convenience corrupts me and I end up at a supermarket. Take a look at the honey - you'll find honey from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Venezuala and a whole myriad of places over a thousand kilometres away without any trouble at all. But try looking for English honey (not even honey from your county, just honey from anywhere in England) or even honey from anywhere in the UK, and see how much harder it is. In my local supermarket, I couldn't find a single jar of honey from the British Isles. But I had a choice of three from Australia. We are a nation of beekeepers - it should not be this difficult to get honey that has come from less than 500km away!