Monday, October 12

of land and labour

peel your carrots and potatoes?

toss out bread crusts?

throw out processed food thats just gone past its 'use by date'?

dont plan weekly meals or have no real idea whats in your food stores ?

choose takeout once a week?

dont care about food waste?

Bad news. Chances are you're contributing to the staggering estimte that a whole quarter of the worlds food supplies is wasted annually. Thats not including the costs of the waste of water used to grow it, the enery used to produce it, transport and store it and the loss of quality and literally lives to those denied it. I have a new favourite quote, it comes from John Locke, a 17th century political/social philosopher.

But if they perished in his posession, without their due use; if the fruits rotted, the venison putrified, before he cold spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was liable to be punished...if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering and laying up, this part of the earth, not withstanding his enclosure, was still to be looked on as waste and might be the posession of any other...

He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away part to anybody else, so that it perished not uselessly in his posession, these he also made use of. And if he bartered away plums, that would have rotted away in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands...the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his posession, but the perishing of anything uselesly in it.

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690),v.37-38,46

4 comments:

Laura Jane said...

Food for thought....

naturewitch said...

Hi Kelly

It's quite amazing, isn't it?? I must confess we have takeaway every now and then, but we generally throw out very little food.

It's a matter of being organised, I think. The times we are more likely to waste food or to buy takeaway is when I'm not organised or when something unexpected happens that throws out the routine. xx

James said...

Thanks goodness for chooks to reduce my food waste guilt

Kelly said...

laura jane- oh, pun-ny!

naturewitch- the stats linked takeaway which i assume means that food gets forgotten in the fridge and tossed. you're right of course, being organised is key. Its certainly a committment.

james- thats good! chooks are high end processors of our food waste, returning about 80% of the value of inputs.

Hello, how are you?

Hello. It's been a while. 5 years. Where did that time go? Reflecting back, I can't remember why I stopped blogging. Perhaps l...