Is this what you call a quaximoron?

Quaximoron

Last month, “quaxing” became the new buzzword amongst cycling advocates, sparked by a certain councillor Dick Quax of Auckland, New Zealand. He claimed that nobody would actually want to transport shopping home from a shopping centre by means other than private car, and he was soon swamped with images of people happily carrying large quantities of goods home by bike, and to a lesser extent on foot or by bus and train. So the term “quaxing” was born, essentially meaning:

 to undertake any journey that would otherwise be expected to be taken by car.

At the market last week, I picked up a large quantity of oranges – enough to fill the whole fruit compartment of my fridge (which ironically is made by New Zealand firm Fisher and Paykel, but I digress). “Quaxing” them back from the market was never an issue – they part filled one of my panniers, and I put the rest of my stuff in my other pannier – in fact it wasn’t even a full shop. Yet this did set me wondering whether all this self congratulating non car use might be completely pointless if said produce had itself travelled half way round the world to get to the market. Was this, in fact, the ultimate oxymoron, or more precisely, a “quaximoron?”

Is this the ultimate “quaximoron”?

In total, there must have been around 4kg of oranges (and a few satsumas), or perhaps 50-60 in total, providing a nice morning freshly squeezed glass of juice for about 10 days. Yet when carbon footprint data is provided, a well known brand of freshly squeezed juice tends to have a much higher carbon footprint than the made-from-concentrate stuff, which is unsurprising, as frozen concentrate takes up a lot less space to transport. These oranges set me back the princely sum of £2, and I could rationalise that anything bought at 5:25pm on a Saturday is otherwise going to waste, but actually they lasted much longer than the weekend, so I’m not sure this is the case.

So is there really any kudos to claim in transporting these oranges the short distance back from the market by bike (it’s barely a mile), when the rest of the journey is the same, regardless?

Actually, I think there still is. Food miles, or indeed food production processes, is a large and complex debate for another place. Even if you only buy local produce, if that local produce is grown in electrically heated and lit green houses, the fact it is local doesn’t really make that much difference. Yet obviously, any citrus fruit must still travel a substantial distance to get here, with the closest producing region being southern Spain.

By road, Valencia to Coventry is almost exactly 2,000 km or 1,250 miles. So “quaxing” some oranges which were grown there back from the market has a negligible impact on such a long journey, right?

Well that might be the case if you drove to Valencia yourself, then drove back, but parked at Coventry market and walked or cycled the “last mile” back home. HGVs might not be popular with cyclists because they cause a significant accident risk, but that risk is small when divided between the sheer amount of produce they can actually carry. The average load carried by HGV is 10 tonnes (the maximum is over four times that), so assuming this is the case for oranges from southern Spain, and that they don’t increase efficiency by taking the ferry, then my 4kg of oranges might be one of 2,500 such loads in a single shipment. Allowing for palettes, the figure might be closer to 2,000.

This is obviously very crude maths, but you can see where this is going – effectively, the impact of one kilometre driven to buy oranges could be equated with 2,000km driven to bring them to market. Except of course that a car has significantly less impact than an HGV, or does it? HGVs are largely driven on motorways, where their CO2 output is significant, but they are having limited impact on urban air quality, and they are causing little accident risk. More and more produce is also being taken by train, where the impact is lower still. A significant proportion of the journey from Spain to the UK can also be made by ro-ro ferry, whereas produce from further afield is almost certain to come by ship, not by air.

A car is a very inefficient machine for taking produce to and from a store of any kind, because a one tonne metal box needs to be moved just for the sake of a few bags of shopping, which often take up only a small amount of space in the boot.

Clearly, there are far too many variables at work here to come up with any definitive mile for mile comparison, and I’m only going to offer the very crude back of an envelope maths as per above. However, it is perfectly reasonable to point out that the impacts of even a short drive to go shopping are far greater on a per mile basis than the impacts of a much longer trip to bring the produce to market. Even when measured on a per trip basis, the short journey by car might indeed be comparable to a much longer journey by HGV, train or ship.

The simplest answer would be to say we should all switch to juice made from locally grown apples, or just to cut out this sugar laden juice altogether, but as long as the market has cheap end-of-week oranges on offer, I’m not going to pretend I’m going to do that.

Every time I go to the market at this time, the traffic wardens have already long since gone home. An environment that is supposed to give pedestrians priority becomes a car-dominated free-for-all. There is a very significant negative impact from this parking that can never be measured on a per mile basis, because it is all about the parking, not the driving. Based on this reason alone, there is a significant benefit from encouraging more people to walk, cycle, or take the bus to the market instead of drive. However the produce gets to the market, getting it home in ways which have less detrimental impact is still a huge benefit to the local community. Therefore I’m not so sure that this really is a “quaximoron”.

• Original article on quaxing.
• Westminster University paper on “green logistics”

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