Waste Reduction Week in Canada
June 25, 2009 by Kandice Martinez
Filed under Super Natural
It’s no secret that the human race likes to waste stuff. You only have to look out your door on Garbage day to get an idea of how much we toss into landfills each year. Or the next time you are out for dinner with your family take a minute to look around you to see how many people finish the food on their plates. How much of it is returned to the kitchen only to be scraped into the garbage? If portion sizes were smaller or we all shared a meal when we were dining out, there would be so much less wasted food and we would probably save a few bucks in our wallet ,and who knows,even shave a few inches off our ever expanding middles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no different from my neighbor, sure I recycle but I have just now got a composter going which should further reduce the amount of trash I send to the landfill. I had every intention of using cloth diapers but was so overwhelmed when the twins came along that I kept putting it off and have still not made the switch. My husband and I often share a meal when we go out to eat but I’m still guilty of buying too much produce and letting it go to waste, although this happens less and less now that I’m really focusing on making sure the girls eat enough fruits and veggies. So yes I am guilty, but as a family we are making a conscious effort to make changes every day to reduce our impact on the environment and create less waste.
So what I saw at my local large (as in Super) grocery store the other day really got under my skin. I was in the produce section contemplating the organic grapes and bananas when I looked down and happened to notice a cardboard box with various types of produce in it, lettuce, onions, bananas, etc. This was apparently the “throw away” box but what got me was that nothing in it looked liked it needed to be tossed, especially the bananas. We go through a lot of bananas in our house and there have been many a time I have been in this specific store late at night getting bananas and having to buy some really sad, black spotted ones. Which is fine as there is nothing wrong with them, we just have to eat them faster or I have to use them for banana bread. It just really annoyed me that I had to pay money for something that was in far worse shape then what they were tossing out. This is not the first time I have witnessed such waste, last year I was in the same store looking for some flowers and there was a trolley filled with buckets of them in all sorts of really nice colors, but there was no price on them.When I asked the lady how much she told me they weren’t for sale as they were past their expiry date, so I asked if I could have some. Nope it’s against store policy. Okay, so I ask what they are going to do with them (here’s where I’m really hoping that they are being donated to a hospice or something) and she tells me that they are being thrown out. After telling her how I really felt about how wasteful that seemed, she said that they would be turned into mulch and used on the property, which I suppose was a little better but I wonder if that was really true or she was just hoping I would go away and stop beaking about it. It made me sad, how many sick, dying or elderly people may have been cheered up by those flowers.
Once I started writing about this, I,of course, was on line looking for stats and came across The Waste Reduction Week in Canada which is October 19th – 25th this year. Seriously I had no idea this even existed. So far there are no events listed for this year, but if you click on the 2008 events you can see that lots groups, municipalities and schools got involved. I will be book-marking this site and checking back to see what activities or events are being planned in my area. There are also some links on their website for activities for individuals like building a composter or a recycled bird feeder.
Waste Reduction Week in Canada
Related posts:
