Imagine a grocery store that is within a short walking distance, such that you don't need to haul a weeks worth of groceries but can get fresh food every single day.
US supermarkets are massive, take forever to buy small amounts of groceries, and even the walk to and from the car is long.
A better world is possible! (If better grocery stores constitute a "better world")
> you don't need to haul a weeks worth of groceries but can get fresh food every single day
I lived that life in my 20s
Turns out I don't actually want to go to the grocery store every day. I want to go once a week and stock up, which I can do thanks to inventions like the refrigerator and the automobile
no judgment on you in particular, but i’m not a fan of this thought process. I believe it’s a major cause for why americans (statistically) are so obese. and i say this as an american that lives in a city but has family in the suburbs.
running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem. it’s sad.
of course one can go to the gym to stay lean and healthy, but that’s even more time consuming than stopping by the store for 5 minutes on the way home, and it requires extreme motivation. Hardly an improvement i’d say.
> running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem
I did live this exact lifestyle in my 20s. I was definitely more active but my diet was way worse. I was closer to a lot of restaurants, and I was closer to a lot of bakeries and convenience stores and such as well.
A healthy lifestyle also requires a healthy diet and city living gave me far too much easy access to snacks and junk food. A lot of "it's only 5 minutes to go buy a snack". Daily stops for coffee that often included a pasty
Yeah, the walkable city does mean people are more active
It doesn't necessarily mean they are much more healthy. It still requires other forms of self control (which I admit, I struggled with)
I agree, it’s not a magic fix for all issues! But it does address one major component, the physical activity part. The other is diet, which is a separate issue of course.
I don't believe it. If you lived right next door to the grocery shop would you still only go once a week and stock up?
Nobody wants less flexibility, rigid plans and higher maintenance costs. I think what you really want is a big house with lots of space away from other people and since you can't have your cake and eat it too you've sacrificed everything else.
I actually did live in an apartment a block away from a grocery store and yes, you're right. I would not trade my current house for having a grocery store that close
Because living in apartments sucks
But even if I did live in my current house with a grocery store right next door, I still would prefer to go as few times a week as possible. Planning ahead and limiting how often I am at stores helps me tremendously with sticking to a budget, which is also something I place a lot of value on
When I lived close to a grocery store not only did I spend more because the prices were higher, I also made more frequent trips for things on a whim, like snacks and treats. It was a much more expensive lifestyle
Maybe other people don't have that same struggle with convenience, but I do. By making the barrier higher, my life is more affordable and I eat less junk food for sure
This depends on a) what you want, and b) the apartment. If you want a garden, then an apartment is a non-starter, obviously. Also if you care about what the exterior of the building looks like that you'll want a house. But other than it doesn't make much difference.
The main difference for me is insulation from your neighbours. I've lived in good apartments and bad ones. The best ones you simply forget that you even have neighbours. The worst ones you can't forget because you can hear their conversations and them locking doors etc. The trouble is it's hard to tell what it's going to be like before you move in and this isn't the kind of thing that has standards or that anyone seems to think about. So for someone sensitive to noise, but also likes to make a lot of noise (I'm a musician), I'm resigned to living in a house too. But I'm not sure it has to be this way.
Well good news, nothing is stoping you from bringing home a full cartful of groceries that walking distance either. You just have more options.
Now, if you are really attached to your car and are only open to using your car for groceries, stay in suburbia, it's oversupplied through centralized planning and not at risk of going anywhere!
> Well good news, nothing is stoping you from bringing home a full cartful of groceries that walking distance either
Dunno about you but I only have two hands and can only carry so much at one time
I could have bought and brought a wagon or something I suppose, but that presents its own problems.
Where do I store the wagon in my tiny apartment?
What do I do with it when I'm actually in the store shopping, to make sure no one steals it while I'm in the store? I can't bring it into the store, it's too bulky for narrow urban grocery store aisles
How do I get my wagon full of groceries to my apartment, with no elevator?
Actually how do I get my empty wagon up to my apartment even, it's not going to manage narrow stairwells very easily even empty. So even if I leave it at the bottom and carry my groceries up by hand, I still have to get the wagon itself upstairs somehow
And then I also own a wagon that takes up my limited apartment space, which I only use to get groceries and provides no other utility for my life.
Unlike a car which I use all the time and only one of those uses is getting groceries
They're incredibly popular here, and yes, all supermarkets will have a lock stand near the checkout area so you can leave them there and easily reach for them as you're bagging your groceries. They're also foldable and/or small enough to fit in almost any closet.
Not only that, but if you're close to a road at all, you'll intake the micro-plastics and nano-plastics.
So you really need to move away from roads. That's possible, but it's really hard to do in most developed nations. Just moving away from a city won't get you to where you need to be. Even when you get there, you have other issues. Like, food, energy, water/sewage treatment, etc.
I don't think people realize how difficult it would be to get away from this particular pollutant in our environment. I mean most of us don't own 500 acres in the Brazilian, Namibian, or Ghanaian countryside that we can retreat to. Even Brazil may be too far gone at this point to be honest. And Brazil is enormous. A lot of space. The number of tolerable nations that would have unaffected areas is decreasing fast. This really is a global problem.
ETA: Some remote parts of Canada and Alaska might fit the bill? Assuming you're not big on quality of life.
You can have really very good quality of life in remote areas. You just might die before you get help if you have a heart attack or something. But the rest of the time it's great!
My grocery store is literally in another town 20 miles away. I have an EV but apparently those are even worse for microplastic generation. Am I screwed?
An EV is objectively not worse for the environment. And virtually all vehicles contain large amounts of plastic (eg PVC). I recently heard model year 2024 vehicles are ~30% plastic by weight.
I’d wait until somebody can clearly state what the demonstrated harms of microplastics are before you conclude that there’s nothing you can do. An EV reduces emissions that we KNOW are bad, and over their lifetimes, the reduction is huge compared to an ICE vehicle. If you’re worried, though, walk or bike whenever you can.
Biking to grocery store is not an option for you, but you can still make a difference if you think about it. Eg, go to the store less frequently. Switch to a chest freezer for perishables. And so on. Draw up an energy budget and do the math.
There is a cost to human life, sure. But you can make it work if you really care enough. You are definitely not screwed.
"Microplastic Free", no, there is no such thing right now. But I'm very far from any major roads/interstates and hundreds of miles to any big city. I didn't move out here to avoid microplastics though, it just (maybe) turned out that way.
I'm actually not terribly afraid of microplastics at all, I just don't like urban environments.
I make at least trip one trip a week. Why would I need to go every day?
I may stop by a store again during the week for a smaller trip if there's something I really need, or pop to a corner store if I need to grab something like drinks for guests, but it's not out of my way.
It's really not a big deal. Bike panniers can hold a ton.
I've seen what a week's worth of groceries looks like for four people and short of a rickshaw you ain't getting all of that on a bicycle with or without panniers. I'm fairly certain the respondent is coyly ignoring the headcount requirement in my original sneer.
Trivial if you leave near a grocery store. If you live in most US cities, much more the suburbs, then being dependent on your vehicle to do literally anything is part of the problem. In very few places in the US can you choose to do otherwise.
US supermarkets are massive, take forever to buy small amounts of groceries, and even the walk to and from the car is long.
A better world is possible! (If better grocery stores constitute a "better world")