Thinking About Food Waste

I live in Staten Island, New York - one of the five boroughs of New York City. Here we are required to recycle paper products, glass and plastics. They must be separated into separate bins and are collected once a week separately from the rest of our trash. If a mistake is made (ie. a plastic bottle is accidentally found in the regular trash, as happened to me once while in college) you are slapped with a fine upwards of one-hundred dollars.

It's to save the Earth, believe me, I get it. However, if I screw up my Thanksgiving dinner and no one in the family wants to eat it and the entire feast makes its way into the regular trash - no one bats an eye. It is an extreme case, but think for a moment how much food do we really throw away every single day?

I just finished listening to a webinar on Food Waste in the United States and it got me thinking: Why ISN'T this a bigger deal? It seems that most of us recognize the importance of recycling paper, plastic (when possible), glass and we have even stopped littering, but food, the thing I just mentioned I value above all else, is getting frivolously wasted by all of us.

I have to still absorb all that I heard this afternoon before I can truly compose a well-thought out post for you to read, but I need to blow off a little steam.

For now I will leave you with a link to the book American Wasteland, which I now want to read. The author, Jonathan Bloom, was the first speaker in the webinar and he was quite compelling. 

Anyone interested in reading this book with me?