What a Waste!
The Independent
Unused food: What a waste
Britain throws away £20bn worth of unused food every year - equal to five times our spending on international aid and enough to lift 150 million people out of starvation
By Cahal Milmo
15 April 2005
.......
There's a nasty, smelly problem out there, and it's not getting any smaller. With the economy booming, we just keep buying things. And then throwing things away. And all the time a tide of rubbish is creeping closer to our front doors.
It stems from the boxes your trainers and your PC come packaged in, and the bottles holding your wine and the carton holding your pizza, and then from the trainers and the PC themselves when you get rid of them, as you soon and surely will, seeking newer and better ones to go with the newer and better decorations and furniture your sitting room requires.
Britain's throwaway society is consuming more than ever; it is also, as a consequence, creating waste faster than it has ever done before. Never mind industrial and commercial waste, there is a mushrooming mountain of domestic waste, the stuff that you and I produce at home.
Fifty years ago, the main contents of our dustbins was indeed dust, or in fact, ashes from domestic coal fires, upon which much household was burnt, thereby shrinking its volume enormously. Now we burn nothing at home. We load our bins with a steadily-growing pile of pizza cartons, drink cans, fast-food remnants, packaging of all kinds and mammoth piles of paper.
Figures now show that a fifth of the food we buy in supermarkets goes straight into the bin.
The throwaway society shows no signs of changing course: consumerism has us too firmly in its grip. But the waste mountain that leaves behind is now starting to spill out of its landfill sites ....
Though the above is about UK, it is relevant to all developing and developed countries.
As we become more affluent we tend to buy more things and food than we actually need and discard those we don't like or can't consume more freely. And in Singapore as the green light has been given to the opening of 2 integrated resorts more waste is to be expected.
It is high time we checked our senseless behaviour.
Unused food: What a waste
Britain throws away £20bn worth of unused food every year - equal to five times our spending on international aid and enough to lift 150 million people out of starvation
By Cahal Milmo
15 April 2005
.......
There's a nasty, smelly problem out there, and it's not getting any smaller. With the economy booming, we just keep buying things. And then throwing things away. And all the time a tide of rubbish is creeping closer to our front doors.
It stems from the boxes your trainers and your PC come packaged in, and the bottles holding your wine and the carton holding your pizza, and then from the trainers and the PC themselves when you get rid of them, as you soon and surely will, seeking newer and better ones to go with the newer and better decorations and furniture your sitting room requires.
Britain's throwaway society is consuming more than ever; it is also, as a consequence, creating waste faster than it has ever done before. Never mind industrial and commercial waste, there is a mushrooming mountain of domestic waste, the stuff that you and I produce at home.
Fifty years ago, the main contents of our dustbins was indeed dust, or in fact, ashes from domestic coal fires, upon which much household was burnt, thereby shrinking its volume enormously. Now we burn nothing at home. We load our bins with a steadily-growing pile of pizza cartons, drink cans, fast-food remnants, packaging of all kinds and mammoth piles of paper.
Figures now show that a fifth of the food we buy in supermarkets goes straight into the bin.
The throwaway society shows no signs of changing course: consumerism has us too firmly in its grip. But the waste mountain that leaves behind is now starting to spill out of its landfill sites ....
Though the above is about UK, it is relevant to all developing and developed countries.
As we become more affluent we tend to buy more things and food than we actually need and discard those we don't like or can't consume more freely. And in Singapore as the green light has been given to the opening of 2 integrated resorts more waste is to be expected.
It is high time we checked our senseless behaviour.
posted by locky2ky at 3:26 PM
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