How’s the environment?

[SOURCE] The richer you are, the more food you throw out. 1 There are people who have to scrape and save for everything they eat, there are people who just can’t get enough to eat.  We throw it out, the left overs.  There’s lost of reasons for it, but the primary reason seems to be that we don’t plan what we are going to eat.  We go to the supermarket and just buy stuff.  The supermarkets don’t help either, they encourage you to buy by making sure they provide enough bags for you to carry your stuff around in.

I do it, throw out food.  I don’t mean to, but it doesn’t get eaten for whatever reason (probably lack of planning), and it ends up in the big bin, and I have a big one, so I can fill it up, I then have to put the bin out on the street and someone comes and takes it away, leaving me with a big bin that’s empty and needs filling up again.  I don’t even know where it goes.  I do now know that it contributes to the emissions of green house gases, seems there’s a lot of methane in my food scraps.

[SOURCE]  It seems that we also throw out our TV sets.

About 234 million computers, televisions and mobile phones were thrown out last year, an increase of 41 million on the year before.

I’m glad I haven’t upgraded to a plasma!  I did get rid of my old CRT monitors and now have a lovely flat screen.  I recently upgraded my mobile phone, but haven’t thrown the old one out yet.

Here we have politicians talking about emission trading schemes, when what we really want is for people to stop being so wasteful.  The supply and demand system works way too well.

With so many people who don’t have as much as I do, it’s bad that I throw away so much stuff.  I don’t give enough consideration to the imapct of my habits.  The impact that they have on the rest of the world.

While we are worrying about whether or not jesus is coming back, or whether or not the new public transport ticketing system is going to work, or how to save enough to fly into space, people continue to starve.  To death.  And they do it without watching television or sending an SMS.

Sobering thoughts.

  1. SOURCE Australia Institute – What a waste – an analysis of household expenditure on food
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