Waste Not – Want Not

I wish I could count the number of times I heard this growing up. According to Dictionary.com, “This proverbial saying was first recorded in 1772 but had an earlier, even more alliterative version, willful waste makes woeful want (1576).”

All I know is that it is easy to not waste much when you don’t have much. Were we poor? Probably. I know we didn’t eat a lot and what little we had was not very nutritious (is there any nutrition in Spam?). We also made do with what we had and repaired everything. We washed old clothes and handed them down. A pair of jeans would make the neighborhood or family circuit until they could no longer be patched and even then, they would be used as cleaning rags.

I guess that is why I cringe when I see people throwing out useful items. My biggest peeve is when someone throws out food simply because they have too much – not because it has spoiled, merely because they bought too many of an item. Food seldom gets a chance to go bad in our house because we eat all of what we buy.

The waste at food businesses is appalling. Grocery stores toss perfectly good fruit and vegetables that have been on the shelf too long. And by toss, I mean they fill dumpsters that then go to the landfill.

Restaurants serve portions they know will not all be consumed. Some of the meal may go in a “doggie bag” but much heads directly to the dumpster. Bakeries sell only fresh products. You never see day-old-bread anymore. So what doesn’t sell is trashed. Is it any wonder that homeless people flock around these dumpsters?

But it doesn’t stop there. In fact, the waste begins at the farm. Misshapen and blemished fruits and veggies never even make it to the grocery stores. Farmers know they can’t get top dollar for these goods, so they trash them even before consumers get a chance to reject them.

Is this a big deal? Well, yes it is, a very big deal. According to a recent report by UNEP and the World Resources Institute (WRI), about one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around $1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems. And here are a couple more UNEP “fun facts”:

In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills.

In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month.

And speaking of landfills, well, I guess you could say the waste stops here. But we are not alone in this waste. Actually, at an average of 1,014 pounds of waste per person per year, we came in at number four in 2000. Denmark got the number one spot that year with 1,234 pounds per person, followed by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Yes, that’s a lot of trash. Trash that we pay for twice, once to buy, then again to dispose of. Have you ever thought about what is making up your trash? Probably not. If it fits in the trash container, it’s out of sight and out of mind. But consider this. How much of your trash is merely packaging of something else?

When we buy a collection of things like fruit or vegetables it goes into those handy plastic bags the stores provide on a roll. Then again, at the checkout counter, that bag of goodies goes into yet another bag to carry home. Everything else is pre-packaged in some sort of plastic container, and often packaged again in another container, then thrown into another bag to carry out the store.

And it doesn’t end at the supermarket. Virtually everything else you buy comes in a bubble pack, plastic bag, or cardboard box – sometimes in all of these for a single item.

And what of broken or old “well used” items? We don’t repair or refurbish anything these days. And manufacturers are feeding off this fact. Nearly everything we buy, from the smallest appliance to major items are made to be disposable. In the ‘60s, televisions had vacuum tubes and cost upwards of $500. It was cost-effective to repair them. Then came semiconductors and printed circuits for televisions. It was much more difficult to repair and would become cheaper to simply dispose of and get a new one. Today, landfills are bulging with old CRT type televisions, many still functioning perfectly.

So, what’s my point? It’s simple folks. Look at your trash container and think about how much money you have paid for every single piece of trash in there. If you happen to be rich, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Most of us aren’t in the One-percenter Club, though. That trash container is full of money – money you paid for items in there originally and money you will pay for its disposal. If you can’t use it, sell it to the recycler. Waste not; want not, and save money. What a concept!