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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Five Simple Things Consumers Can Do to Prevent Food Waste

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  • From: tanya <tanyagarden@gmail.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Five Simple Things Consumers Can Do to Prevent Food Waste
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:38:50 -0800

restaurants: Years ago I  had a friend who worked  in a cafe where the owner insisted on serving a huge plate of french fries that no one could finish. She asked him why he did that, and he said it gave the impression of good value for the money -- a heaping plate, abundance. She hated throwing all the food away but could not persuade him to do otherwise.

grocery stores: I've heard some of them lock their dumpsters or refuse to contribute to food banks because of "liability issues," even if the donees are willing to sign a waiver. 

I wonder what percent of food is wasted? It'd be interesting to do a study for just one community.

The great Agnes Varda documentary The Gleaners and I looks at how much food is wasted between farm and consumer in France, but it's images,  not numbers, and it's been a few years since it was made.

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 2:14 AM, <liz@allslash.org> wrote:
It's hard for me to imagine but there is still a huge amount of waste just from people putting more food on their plates than they want to eat. When my work kept me on the road much of the time, I'd see it constantly in restaurants. People would order a meal that was clearly more than one person could eat, pick at it, and leave the rest to be thrown out. Granted, restaurant menus don't make it easy to order small meals, but if everyone refused to order the large meals, restaurants would change their menus.

An acquaintance of my daughter is a 'dumpster diver,' and has shown my daughter the perfectly good produce and canned food that she found in grocery store dumpsters. A net of oranges with only one slightly squishy one, a plastic-wrapped head of cabbage with no discernible damage or spoilage, canned vegetables and jars of jam that were still months from their 'Best Used By' date, and more. This friend told my daughter that more than half of her family's food comes from grocery store dumpsters, which tells you how much is being thrown out.




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