| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Brownbear |
UK wasting food, says GorrrrdonArticle hereNormally, I'd be delighted that the porblem has been recognised and is being addressed politically, but I don't know. My levels of faith in this shower's ability to achieve anything other than waste and self-harm are at a new low (and the old low it has replaced was pretty low itself). All I can foresee now is the recruitment of a great regiment of clipboardistas, target monitoring assessors, nutritional outreach workers, food waste Tsars, or perhaps Sultans of Bins, the introduction of a computer database that doesn't work, enforcement officers using terrorism legislation to rout through your bin in search of half-eaten pies and discarded peas, and a food landfill charge (justified as an environmental measure, natch). Polly Toynbee will demand that the poor should be given vouchers for Waitrose, provided they spend them on Hummus and Parma ham. Julie Burchill will publish an article praising waste as an expression of the vibrancy of working-class sulture. There will be a lot of spurious headlines like "The Sun Says, Save Our Pies!!!!!" Then some focus group will suggest that ABC1s might not vote Labour and the whole thing will be quietly shelved, at a total cost of a few hundred million if we're lucky. |
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| Ian33568 |
Brownbear for food Tsar Brownbear for food Tsar Brownbear for food Tsar Brownbear for food Tsar....you could be the one...... 
That could be your inaugural speech....brilliant. |
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| Gervase |
Hah, but I ate all the pies! | ||||
| Behemoth |
I am Lord of the Pies! | ||||
| marigold |
As food prices rise, waste will reduce as a natural consequence. Of course the poor will suffer most from rising prices, but there's nothing new there. | ||||
| JB |
While it's right that people point out how much waste there is when I heard that Gordon Brown was doing the pointing out part of me (the cynical part) immediately thought "so basically you admit the economy's gone down the pan and your only suggestion is to blame everyone else for not eating up as nanny told them to" 
All he need to do now is rename himself Potato Pete and the image will be complete. |
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| Rob R |
You lot are all far too cynical, finally the man is towing the Downsizer line didn't notice a 'welcome' thread for him  , give that man a carrot (and make sure he doesn't waste it) and lets get back to worrying about what data will be lost next.
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| vegplot |
He can have a bloated badger. | ||||
| Jonnyboy |
I would be concerned with any policy that simple targets householders, the waste inherent in the production, distribution and retailing of food is simply massive. So any policy needs to be holistic. | ||||
| cab |
I put a perfectly good salad into the compost bin yesterday. Or the remnants of one. The total cost of it would be approaching zero, because it was all home grown as catch crops. Replaced it with another lovely home grown salad...
Also chucked some mushrooms onto the compost pile (wild picked, a few were maggoty), some cherries on the garden wall for the birds (the last handfull from the previous wild pickings) alongside some stale (home baked) bread. Also composted some cabbage (also home grown), and assorted peelings and suchlike. Am I a dreadfully wasteful person for wasting all of this perfectly good food? Or perhaps is the problem not how much you waste, rather it is where the food you waste was sourced? |
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| Nanny |
well spoken there and i agree in truth we waste very little and what is waste is often on the compost heap anyway a comment by radio 2 (terry wogan's lt ) was that for the last several years they have been urging us to throw away perfectly good food as it was past it's "sell by" or "use by" date and now they are telling us off for it. i reckon a large proportion of eatable food is chucked out by people who adhere rigidly to those dates....how can you ever have achees that gets past it's use by date? the stuff only starts to get interestin then............ |
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| JB |
How much of that food is thrown out because people shop once a week and by the end of the week Saturday's ham has become Friday's health hazard. How much is due to ill considered multi buys. Sometimes they're worth it and sometimes a BOGOF is just a way to guarantee having too much to eat even though it might have been cheaper. | ||||
| vegplot |
Your waste didn't involve food miles, processing or packaging costs. It went from garden to waste. Assuming you simply didn't just dig it up and put it in the compost just for fun then it can only be considered as natural consequential waste. It does raise the issue if you can do this with your own food what excuse do people have who buy in food? They could use the same arguments to justify their waste and therefore shouldd not be treated any differently. You do compost which at least keeps the nutrients in the same locale so all you're 'wasting' is solar energy. I'm only talking about consumer waste which is difficult to get away from. A great deal of the waste produced is in the supply chain which requires a different approach to resolve the problem. |
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| bagpuss |
I think stopping supermarkets running BOGOFs on perishable goods and instead just lower the price of individual items would have an interesting effect |
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| JB |
What I've noticed is that unlike markets and greengrocers supermarkets rarely reduce the price of in season produce. Instead they appear as BOGOF deals. So your shopping costs just as much but you can get twice as much to throw away. |
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| Rob R |
In a biological food system there is no such thing as 'waste', which is a relatively new concept largely due to chemical & petro-powered food systems. I wonder how much waste has been created by government in the past 11 years in the interests of 'public health'.
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| bernie-woman |
I haven't got a problem with GB highlighting this at all - until the average shopper takes some responsibility for what they buy and how they use it then all of this 'greenwash' of not using plastic bags etc.. is not going to make a blind bit of difference to the environment, landfill etc.. and I am so sick of some of my friends who can cook complaining about the cost of food when they waste ridiculous amounts. | ||||
| Jonnyboy |
You're not an atypical consumer though, the problem is how the food is sourced and how much is wasted and in what way. |
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| cab |
I'm reminded of the lettuces on the local farmers market. They have manky outer leaves on them, which are left on because then the lettuces can be packed to take to market, the consumer then takes these protective leaves off and eats the rest of these perfect, perfect lettuces... But of course it isn't that simple. People-watching around there is very revealing, people pick up these wonderful lettuces, look at them, put them back down looking disgusted. I'll wager that the same people then go to M&S and buy nasty plastic packed lettuces, pre-chopped carrots, etc. because they perceive this to be a more convenient, cleaner and less wasteful choice, where the protective outer leaves have been removed and replaced with a placcy box and a placcy bag on top of that.
The problem really is that people don't quite get that food is often perfectly well wrapped all on its own without plastic, and that if you buy wisely and ethically then you've got a few manky outer leaves to be rid of and thats it. Even if it DOES go off, lob it on to the compost pile, doesn't matter, its from no distance away so that barely matters. Whereas if you've bought a plastic wrapped, packaged, perfect looking monstrosity then you've got waste associated with every step; it matters that it has been shipped miles, to then waste it seems disproportionately stupid to me. Know what you're going to eat, a little planning, a little thought, recognise good ingredients that are fresh enough such that they'll still be edible after a couple of days in the fridge, and simply don't expect to be able to eat the same things six days after you last went and reprovisioned... Expectations people have, that they can just buy loads and select out the few bits they'll eat, well, that has to change 
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| Jonnyboy |
I first wrote this article in 2005. Whilst it's more of a discussion starter than a serious work, it does demonstrate that little has changed in the last three years. Yet again it's the economic drivers that force change rather than any ethical beliefs on the part of general consumers. | ||||
| Azura Skye |
I agree Cab, a little planning is a good thing : )
In this household I can see the shopping pattern. Buy veg, but then get sidetracked by tastebuds and tummy and buy lots of other packaged things, that look so yummy it gets eaten first, resulting in the veg wilting away. |
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| JB |
Our planning has gone out of the window a little since we started getting a veg box. We can never be quite sure what's going to be in the veg box so some of it we can't plan around and does get wasted. | ||||
| Rob R |
I can sympathise with the veg in that case. 
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| Azura Skye |
at least with a veg box, its only the veg that gets chucked and not loads of plastic wrapping.
Even if the food does get eaten, the package still must be disgarded. Food waste is ridiculous though, considering that it's one of the heftiest energysappers in the household. (innit?) |