Waste not, want not.
It’s common knowledge that much of the food produced here and elsewhere is wasted. Some of the statistics are shocking. From U N Food and Agriculture Organization:
- Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted.
- Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries.
- Industrialized and developing countries dissipate roughly the same quantities of food — respectively 670 and 630 million tonnes.
Food waste = water waste. Food production requires water. In the United States, food waste accounts for 25 percent of the country's water use.
Now these google-gathered statistics might be tempered by other studies, such as:
We’ve all heard the staggering statistics about food waste. A new study says they’re wrong.
But we’ve all experienced the waste first hand. What prompted this subject was our own experiences here at our condo. We have garbage bins and recycle bins. We have the time and the inclination to monitor what goes into these, from time to time. Lots of cardboard boxes (thanks, Amazon) are put in the garbage, when they could be flattened and put in the recycle bin about a hundred feet away. We take care of these when we can. But we’ve also discovered so much food waste. I’m talking about packages of foods that have not been opened but are discarded perhaps because of a “best if used” date, which are quite conservative indeed.
Living in an agricultural area we see trees laden with fruit which all too often go unharvested. Local groups and others across the country practice gleaning.
On U.S. farms, gleaning is making a comeback, as a national anti-hunger organization has turned to the ancient practice to help feed the poor. And it also gives farmers a way to use produce that would otherwise be wasted.
We have grown much of our own food for many years, and we have always been frugal, so the idea of throwing away any food is foreign to us. Foods can be re-purposed with a little time and effort. We make soup every week from a chicken carcass and any extra food can be added to the stock for a variety of soups. Admittedly, not always 10 on a scale of 10, but nourishing, lol.
Some of this takes time and effort, which luxury not everyone has. And any lifestyle has a YMMV aspect. Composting food that would have normally been discarded is an excellent solution, especially if one is aware of the final destination of the compost. We on the HOA board of the condo association are trying to implement that opportunity for our residents. Judging from the recycling vs garbage results here, I’m only partially hopeful that this will be well-adopted, but we can hope.
On another subject, on last night’s KTK I mentioned our fear when we saw a touch of fog, that it was from a fire. In this morning’s paper we discovered that our fears were well-grounded. It was smoke from a new fire in distant Yolo County plus a flare-up on the huge Lake County fire. This level of fires is not unexpected in late September and October, but frighteningly unusual this time of year. And we are facing the 4th of July this week.
Waste: could be food, could even be time.