I can't imagine that anyone will jump to their feet to argue that waste is good - so if we are all against it, why is there so much around?
This blog is about food waste, but the same types of arguments apply to energy waste, and if you were to go back to one of my earliest blogs (Futile gesture? 26 May) I can tell you that I am still turning lights off in places where they aren't needed (but I did take to heart the comments on that blog about different people needing different levels of illumination).
We keep hearing that we need to produce more food to feed a growing world population, and this is probably true, to some extent, but the argument is often rolled out by a farming lobby with a challenging look which seems to say - argue with that and you'll look like a callous heartless fiend!
If food is such a valuable resource - and of course it is - then why do we throw away millions of tonnes of food each year? The figures seem to vary but recent estimates are of 3.6million tonnes from households in England and Wales and 6.7 million tonnes for the UK as a whole - and about half of these amounts are of edible food. [This either means that the Scots and Irish throw away an awful lot more food per head than the English and Welsh, or that I have misunderstood something in the media reports - or both! or something else!]
And in today's Guardian there is a claim that a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and the US would be enough to lift 1 billion people out of food poverty.
These are difficult and complex issues - but our starting point as ethical consumers should surely be to waste less. 'Waste less' should be the starting point - we may well need to 'Grow more' too - but let's get waste under control.
In the last 24 hours I have gone to three events where food was provided for the attendees - that was very kind of the organisers - but at each, the amount of food left over was embarrassing. We need to shift the norm at least to accurate food provision but ideally to underprovision rather than overprovision.
I'm coming round to the view that a general policy of 'bring your own food' to such meetings would be eminently reasonable and sensible. If Defra wants to give me lunch (in return for me telling them what the RSPB thinks they should do) then that is very kind of them - but maybe they could give me a couple of quid as I leave the building to pay for my sandwiches instead!
When we throw away perfectly good food we are throwing away precious resources that could be better used by others and that have used precious land, water and energy to come into existence. Wasting food will lay waste the planet.
The less we waste, the less land we need to grow our food - we are being more efficient. Being more efficient on a crowded planet is a good thing - it'll leave a bit more space for the tigers, robins and spiders.
It is scarey. Isn't there a plan afoot to stop food processing companies putting 'sell by' and 'use by' dates on food packages in the hope that this may help ?? Maybe it will, can't see it myself. Personallly I never pay the dates much heed anyway. I always use my nose. We need to get right back to basics. Supermarkets, (don't start me on Supermarkets), have a leading role to play and could plough back some of their HUGE profits into information and learning, instead of offering the consumer BOGOFs, Its nonsense.
Some good points Soosin. I was brought up with a respect for food that goes beyond the usual northern carefulness in that I hate throwing whole packs or half loaves away. I mentioned on Facebook in answer to Mark that I recently found a punnet of blueberries had grown mould and were therefore inedible as a snack. I simply rescued the ones that had not started to disintegrate and roasted them with some chicken pieces to produce an excellent sauce. This meant that even if there was a small amount of mould on the good ones, I would be cooking them beyond the point where they would give me food poisoning. Bread is another example - mouldy bread whilst no use for sandwiches is fine for toast if trimmed.
Of course, the other area of food that is particularly annoying from a recycling perspective is plastic packaging. Unfortunately, some local authorities (are watching Bury MBC? but well done North Beds) do not have any provision for recycling this material. The Mail campaign against plastic bags merely ended with some supermarkets charging for the bags (predictable??) whereas the answer was removal or if not, go for the Co-op approach of providing quick decay bags. Better still, why go to the supermarkets when there are perfectly good greengrocers and butchers around (especially here in Bury but there are some cracking butchers in Potton and Gamlingay, for example).