Wasting food is criminal!

I am dead serious and am trying to figure out a way to punish it. Some research in England has found 40 percent of all brought food is wasted! Nearly half of everything you buy to eat just goes down the drain or in a landfill. Not only are we wasting heaps of money but all that energy in the production and transport.

I would like to know a basic conversion for that banana you let go rotten, something like it the same energy as a light bulb for how ever many hours.

I have food waste perspective from working in restaurants and on boats, a mother who hates to waste anything and another who is more obsessed with things going off.

Working on boats I have spent around 15 thousand dollars on feeding around twenty people for a month. I try to reinvent and reuse all the leftovers but no one cares and all are so spoilt, I guess at least a quarter of what I buy and make goes into the bin. In some restaurants the food waste is given to pig farmers, very few compost and the majority nothing with this resource.

The freegans, it is possible to live off the waste of society. On one trip around Manhattans supermarkets at around 10pm I took home hundreds of dollars of perfectly good food. You feel strange about eating out of rubbish bags but it is astounding what you find. This is an example of the flaws in the capitalist economy, why isn’t this food being sold at a discount or given to needy? Because it might effect the profits if people can get stuff cheaper or free. The food being wasted everyday in Manhattan is sad when you see so many even in the city itself struggling to survive.

Living with a Guatemalan family I feel bad leaving a grain of rice on my plate even when meals are well carb heavy is an understatement. Pasta, potatoes, tortillas, beans, bread and rice all appear in some combination most meals.

The only other time I survived on carbs was as a student when we only had rice pasta and potatoes so my flat mate decided to cook all of them.

I am told in some under educated Mayan villages families face malnutrition when they are perfectly capable of having a balanced diet. They sell all their vegetables, eggs, milk and other produce to buy beans and corn.

Thinking in terms of green house gas and carbon reduction, reducing food waste seems to be an overlooked issue. How can a tax be imposed on food waste? Supermarket should be charged for disposal of foodstuff, something that reflects the energy loss and encourages efficient use of the resource. Be it composting or some form of making use of the energy.

There seems to be so many options to make use of this resource all we need is some legislation to force our lazy asses into it.

Gautemala thinking

Habits are hard to break as anyone who has cursed themselves with smoking knows. It gets interesting when you need to change you lifelong toiletry methods. The countries infrastructure is inadequate, how can an entire country end up with a sewage system that can’t take paper? What do you do when early one morning after a night of a few too many drinks you forget? Not thinking straight standing over it assessing my options I go to fish it out and realize that with never work but am to scared to flush…. Will it cause the whole town’s sewage system to block up? Oh man what do you do?
The smell does help you remember usually.
Well maybe this is my knew obsession, the rubbish strewn everywhere does bother me but I think it is like cigarettes no one knows better or cares enough to change those habits. The lake shore, the fields of corn, the town is a collage of plastics. Other villages around the lake are much cleaner and even have simple forms of recycling.
My trip across the lake was great a small boat with a bit of wind and chop, I knew we were in for interesting one, so put my snowboarding jacket on. Halfway across I was holding a sheet of plastic and loving it looked around to see others not so enthusiastic and I couldn’t stop laughing.
I finished a week of struggling to teach kids English, hard when my English is terrible and my Spanish worse. On the final day I finally managed to keep their attention for all of an hour, rewarding.

In this village to ask for Maria is a code for drugs. Almost everything is available very cheaply at nine in the morning I was offered coke walking along the main drag. Mayan women seem to prefer drug dealing which is easily understandable when the other option for many is to walk the streets day and night selling cakes. Some of the cake selling women have figured out a way to make a little more per sale. It has become an employment option because of the type of tourists attracted to the area rather than the availability. People have even tried to create Thailand style full moon parties amazingly and impressively the community saw the influence on its youth and requested them to stop, for now they have stopped.

In a village full of problems I see hope. The Mayan family I lived with had a plan that was wonderful to hear, they only had two kids and didn’t want anymore, they intend on putting their kids through university. The father enjoyed telling me his plans and obviously asks everyone for their thoughts on his plans. He has an organic coffee farm involved in fair trade and is building more rooms on top of his house so they can accommodate more students. What do you think of his plan?

The dependency on tourism bothers me an economy can not solely rely on the tourist dollar. The situation is fragile and I have had many discussions with locals about “where are all the tourists” the state of the world economy is this why? The Spanish teaching industry is booming and surely this is a good thing increasing the education among the community. Only if communities don’t become dependant, is it sustainable? Well definitely more so than continuing to fill the lakes and rivers with untreated sewage!

Super green markets

The “green market” in Union square is one of my favorite things in Manhattan. I love it as a chef who had lost touch with seasonality, my excuse being it is all the wrong way around, Christmas equals summer outside eating.
Fresh food tastes great and the interaction and trust developed with the purveyors reminds me of my favorite food, fish that I caught, cleaned and cooked. There is a great loss when food is in tidy packaging on neatly stacked shelves, the reality of where that food comes from. I love the interaction markets encourage, the way you relate to your food much better than in a supermarket. Also on a social aspect you are far more likely to talk to people at a market or local store than at a supermarket.

How green can the market be? I felt very good about myself when I managed to produce a “zero waste” meal for two. I brought my own bag, Tupperware for the scallops, I was tempted but refrained from removing the rubber band from the asparagus.
In my time in New York I was astounded with the abusively excessive packaging and daily waste. I have discovered it is very hard to live a minimal impact lifestyle and have a huge respect for those who endeavor to. Recycling systems are confusing and it is such a hassle to separate compost able waste let alone taking it to drop off spots. You have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of time and effort and many of us know how easy it is to forget the bloody reusable shopping bags.

Does the economics of it make sense? Is it “Greener”
Sure local food travels less but all this mass production stuff we got into had reasoning behind it, efficiency. One big truck or ten small trucks and vans? The whole competitive advantage concept, some places grow apples more efficiently and others bananas. We trade because it improves efficiency and therefore our standard of living.
New Zealand can produce a pound of butter and ship it to the UK for less energy than it takes to produce a pound of butter in the UK!
Why will many people pay more for local food? I think some sort of patriotism. I will often pay a little more for the familiarity of NZ products.

It isn’t easy to grow food in Manhattan so I wonder about the economic sense of trying but am torn in many ways. I love the idea of rooftop gardens, growing you own food is very rewarding, cities contain more pollutants than farms will this mean the food grown is effected? The time and effort possible transferred from more productive work
Wasting food
We consume for sustenance but modern cuisine has moved so far away from the basic human need to eat as fuel for survival. Mainly for indulgence and speed or laziness
The quantity of food that is thrown out is unbelievable! Right through the range of producers and consumers, restaurants, supermarkets and households all waste stupid amounts of food. The economic system encourages waste, people are laziness, greedy and it waste is accepted by western society.
I think we need to discourage food waste possible by finding a system of making the waster pay for the costs of that waste. I can see this in a restaurant scene when the waiter clears a table a charge is added to the bill for the proportion of the wasted food.
BBC intersting links

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4444429.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/costingtheearth_20050414.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7334916.stm

Human behavior in a throw away society

Public space recycling has potential to create a significant reduction in waste. It’s estimated that as much as 50 percent of rubbish in public space is recyclable.

Thinking about it, most of the waste I produce in streets and parks is drink bottles and cans. Problem, putting recycling bins in place doesn’t seem to work very well.

Walking through central park on a nice day I brought a bottle of water, drank it and wondered about my options of disposal. While thinking about the trade off between how bad I would feel not recycling verse how far I was willing to carry a unwanted bottle around I came across a rubbish bin overflowing with bottles and just as I was about to add to the pile I noticed a alternate option. Right next the overflowing pile of plastic was a recycling bin. I disposed of my bottle happily, feeling environmentally conscious. Assuming the effort and all other factors were equal in all aspects of this choice why is the “bad” landfill bin overflowing instead of the “good” recycling bin.

Putting my bottle in the recycling bin made me feel better about throwing out, I don’t think I am alone in this feeling and I am sure that if confronted or questioned about their preferences on this issue the overwhelming majority would choose to recycle a bottle.

Two bins side by side, why would anyone knowingly choose the option that is worse for their environment? The consequences of this choice are barely apparent at the time of disposal, although in this case as the bin was overflowing I see minimal consequence.

Habit, we are not used to having the option? Indifference possible because it is a drop in the bucket, so much waste produced what difference does one bottle make? Is incentive required? Monetary? Social responsibility?

I am willing to make some sacrifice in the name of being green but at some point the benefit ceases to outweigh the cost. The amount of sacrifice will differ for everyone but the more visible (or is it understandable) the cost becomes the better.

More people willing to make greater sacrifice.

Make it easier (reduce sacrifice) more people willing to recycle.

Thoughts on how to improve the use of public space recycling bins

Society progressing to a state where it becomes a social taboo to be seen irresponsibly disposing of waste.

Targeted education, many people don’t see that the option exists even when it is right in front of them. Inform us!!!! We care about the planet and want to do our bit

Talking rubbish bin! Yes it sounds absurd but could serve as a reminder to help people break the habit of not caring about what they do with there waste. “Hey you could recycle that” yes I imagine it would be very annoying.