Driving to the supermarket for the weekly shop can indirectly cause less damage to the environment than walking to a local shop, according to government-funded research.

According to the campaign group Transport 2000, heavy goods vehicles used by supermarkets are five to eight times more efficient for each tonne of goods carried than the vans used by local shops. The report says: “Generally speaking, the smaller shops perform less well on greenhouse gas emissions when compared with the larger supermarkets. Smaller shops use smaller, less efficient delivery vehicles than the supermarkets and have less well integrated supply chains.”

Supermarkets lose their advantage as far as perishable items bought daily are concerned.

Tara Garnett, the report’s author, said that shopping at supermarkets made environmental sense if shoppers filled their car boots once a week.

She added, however, that thanks to supermarkets, “we now expect to be able to buy certain kinds of apple all year round”. The report recommends that consumers be educated to adapt what they eat according to Britain’s seasons and accept that some produce will not always be available.

The study acknowledges that it does not necessarily make sense to buy home-grown food, because of the energy that may be needed to ripen fruit and vegetables in Britain. “Bringing winter lettuce in from Spain may use less energy than growing (it) under glass here,” it says.

Importing fruit with a short shelf-life to Britain by air could, overall, produce less emissions than sending them by ship. Cherries air-freighted from the US are not refrigerated during the flight; road-hauled cherries from Turkey are refrigerated for five days.

Our food supply chain involves more intensive use of transport than any other European country, the report says. It suggests that the food industry be urged to reduce field-to-shop carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent over ten years.

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