Even if you’re a hardcore environmentalist, you may be surprised by some of the answers. Being green these days is a complicated business. It turns out that almost all human activity can be measured in shades of green: from greenest to not even a little bit green.

If we accept the current global scientific consensus, then each person’s individual contribution to greenhouse gases – in particular, carbon dioxide – needs to be reduced by three-quarters. That means reassessing just about every choice we make in our daily lives . . .

BANANAS

The most popular fruit in Britain, with sales worth £750 million a year, racks up plenty of food miles. But at least bananas are delivered by sea, which is 100 times less polluting than going by air.

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BACKGROUND

• Good food trail: Wales

• Giles Coren's Top 10 reviews for 2007

• Food festivals 2008

Related Internet Links

• Buy Shades of Green: A (Mostly) Practical A-Z for the Reluctant Environmentalist by Paul Waddington

Related Links

• How green are you quiz

• Ten things you thought were green but actually aren't

Greenest: fairtrade organic bananas

Surely all the food miles, refrigeration and artificial ethylene-ripening involved in banana production mean that the greenest solution is to stop eating them altogether? Not exactly. Thanks to various twists and turns of colonial history, several national economies are now completely dependent on the banana trade. If we stopped buying, what would they do instead? Whatever they decided to do next, it could be a lot less green than growing bananas. So supporting best-practice banana-growing may be a sound ecological investment: and organic production, though tricky, eliminates the heavy use of agrochemicals.

Dark green: fairtrade OR organic bananas

No need for hand-wringing if you can’t find bananas that are both fairtrade and organic: either option is good. Fairtrade bananas soak up lower levels of agrochemicals than standard ones, and are unlikely to have been produced on a destructively large scale. Organic bananas, on the other hand, may not have been fairly traded, but their production will be on a scale that’s more likely to benefit small producers directly.

Not even a little bit green: any old banana

After cotton, bananas are the second most sprayed crop in the world. As well as getting regular doses of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, the bunches are often wrapped in pesticide-coated plastic bags while still on the tree.

Five of the chemicals used on bananas are classified as extremely hazardous by the World Health Organisation, and three orga-nophosphate pesticides are applied that are not approved for use in the UK. On large plantations, which are mostly run by the four corporations that manage 80 per cent of world banana trade, more money is spend on agrochemicals than on workers’ wages.

More information: www.bananalink.org.uk

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