Going bananas

Waste not...

This month Maclean's magazine exposed the horrific amount of food wasted every day around the world. In many cases more food is wasted than consumed.

"...58 per cent of all the carrots grown currently went in the trash. That is, Stuart says, “for every carrot you eat, you have paid for at least one more to be thrown away.” Lettuce is even worse: for every serving of fresh salad eaten [...] another two have been thrown away"

More than institutionalized, the practice of throwing out perfectly healthy, fresh food is often legislated:

"...bureaucrats [...] have cooked up laws to ensure that all EU citizens are eating fruit and veggies of the same shape and size. In 2008, one British wholesaler was forced to chuck 5,000 kiwis for being four grams lighter than the 62 gram cut-off—the equivalent of being one millimeter too thin..."

But we can't put all the blame on the bureaucrats, everyone from farmers to consumers are getting their hands dirty in this mess.

"...Torontonians generated 70 kg more waste per person last year than just 10 years ago. Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, we increased our municipal waste by 24 per cent, compared to the OECD average increase of just five per cent."

This waste is not limited to the fields, but plagues our streams as well:

"The European Commission estimates that 40 to 60 per cent of all fish caught by European fleets are thrown back to sea because they are too small, or the wrong species (Greenpeace puts the figure even higher, suggesting that 117 million of the 186 million fish caught in U.K. waters are tossed back to sea). [...] the amount of fish-based protein actually consumed amounts to just 10 per cent of the marine animals removed annually from the oceans..."

Not only are these practices painfully counter-intuitive to feeding the hundreds of millions of starving people (mostly women and children), the consequences are also looming for the rest of the world:

"Factory farms have become one of the biggest sources of pollution on the continent. So when we waste from the industrial food system, we are also wasting oil, releasing greenhouse gases, polluting waterways and hastening global warming. Even worse, many of the environmental costs of creating, then wasting, so much food—such as deforestation, water depletion and soil erosion—are being foisted on developing countries, where increasing amounts of cereals, grains and produce are being grown to sate the West’s growing appetite. When we pay Brazil to chop down the rainforest to grow soy, or have Kenya drain the Tana River delta to make sugar, we of course also hasten the never-ending extension of the agricultural frontier into the world’s last, remaining forests and wetlands."

The added linkage is my own. You can read the entire original article here, or in the reading corner of our library. Get angry, get active!

Want not...

The silver lining in this dark cloud came when I found this article today in the Hamilton Spectator. The Ontario Christian Gleaners are an inspired and motivated organization, just down the road from us. They take some of this perfectly good, but unwanted food, and divert it from the dump.
Their over 150 hardworking volunteers process 9,000kg of food each week into dried snacks and soup mixes which is then donated to relief organizations and distributed around the world. Find out how by watching this video.
The operation costs $150,000 and runs entirely on donations. If you're looking for a place to channel you energy after reading the Maclean's article, this is a great place to start. Your time, money and food can help them keep up the good work.

Want to learn more? The Gleaners are hosting open houses tomorrow (Dec 2) and Monday Dec 7th at 10:30am.