Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/07/wasted-looks-at-the-major-iss.html
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This was truly revolting, humans are terrible stewards of the Earth.
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I hate wasting food. When ever I don’t eat a left over because it never just sounds good or what ever, I feel bad.
But yes, no one should be going hungry because we don’t have food, it is purely a distribution problem (hindered by other human caused problems in some areas.)
Fun fact - this is one reason that Asia is so damn populated, lots and lots of rice that has more calories than most other grains.
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I think one of the major factors (not just food, but also textiles and building supplies) is businesses that pay so much less attention to the demand side of supply/demand, and then wind up throwing so much merchandise away.
I have actually seen grocery store employees fill a dumpster with decent fruits and vegetables (HEB in Austin), lock it down and walk away when there are dozens of shelters and food kitchens that would happily dispose of it for them that same day.
Then there’s the stores like H & M who’d rather trash unsold clothing than sell it on to discount stores as if there was an expiration date on fashion.
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Just check outside of any supermarket. 100’s of food/containers thrown away every day. Food just past pull-date is deliberately mixed with dirt/sludge to make it inedible. Fresh-made-daily food tossed every day.
And if you are caught pulling perfectly good food out of the trash, YOU’LL BE ARRESTED and thrown in jail…as a criminal.
If you can’t pay, you can’t have it, and it goes to the dump…to be plowed under by bulldozers and then ferment creating toxic waste for your kids and their kids to inherit forever! -*(
TQQdles™
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I’ve heard that to get rid of dumpster divers some grocery stores will spray the produce they throw away with bleach.
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All the grocery store dumpsters here lock into the side of the building with no outside access possible, and have built in compactors, some even have mulching feeds. It is a shame how much gets wasted at the grocery store level. Consumer studies show people are much more likely to buy when the shelves are piled high with perfect X, it is wasteful and unsustainable.
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Which then gets sold as potting soil… At a huge mark-up, of course. After being written off as a loss.
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Having a compost bin helps with the guilt.
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There is a brilliant group of people in Pittsburgh, PA who are doing something about it. They have an app. that notifies volunteers where food can be “rescued” (grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries). The rescuers then pick it up and take it to local shelters, etc. https://412foodrescue.org/
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But there’s where it’s a feature. Compost is Good Use, not Waste.
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The thing to do would be to find a way to make it a bigger write-off if they donate it.
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