waste management
July 21, 2008
If you like this recipe, I am sure you will love these related recipes!
Like it or not, human beings are basically beasts with unusually big brains. Yet we face an awkward conundrum: instinctively driven by a need for survival, our bodies tell us to eat whenever we can in preparation for long spells of hungry nomadic wandering. Unfortunately our instinct has yet to catch up with the birth of agriculture some 12,000 years ago (when man discovered seeds in a decomposing turd and PRESTO! farms were formed). Many of us feel our stomachs yearn for sustenance, even when recently filled. To make matters more discomfiting, we' ve been equipped with a sense of self-recognition, able to acknowledge the surplus of food but unable to stop ourselves from indulging. Yet it' s not just the size of our belts that contributes to a sense of guilt. Like it or not that fat heap of trash we' ve amassed also weighs on our conscience. 
With global food shortages a major crisis, I don' t intend to make a glib point about the malaise that grips those of us who can afford to eat our fill. But I can say that the source of much of my struggle with food stems from a pervasive sense of over-abundance. Many eating habits deeply engrained in daily life have left me feeling empty instead of full.
Incredible advances in agriculture, refrigeration and packaging mean that most of us know no limit on the food we can have. We get what we want when we want it: gone are the days of chasing down game or foraging to fill our bellies. Want a bottle of Gatorade? Pull over, the rest stop' s open. Want a box of Oreos? Drive to the 24-hour Stop and Shop. Want the Friday night Sea Bass special at that restaurant 40 minutes away? Just hop in the car and within the 
hour, it' s yours. But good as the trifles taste, some feeling of discontentment nags. Some eternal ennui keeps knocking down your refrigerator door. Hoping to silence the henpecking, you buy more Oreos: this time embedded in a pint of Ben and Jerry' s Mint Chocolate Cookie. The cycle continues.
If this passage sounds familiar, it' s probably because you' ve read a version of it in some diet book. There' s a reason: glut feels bad and weighs on you, whether it' s on your waist or in your wastebasket.
What feels good is accountability and heeding the distinction between what you really need and what you simply want. It' s not easy to say “No”when anything you like is readily available, anytime you want it. Even things you didn' t know you were craving suddenly appear and must be had. Hey! There' s a Jamba Juice. You' re kind of thirsty…why not get a large Mango Mantra? You toss the Styrofoam cup and plastic straw and lid as soon as your smoothie' s been sipped away.
Over the course of the day how many wrappers, cups and bottles do you trash? How many garbage cans of needless waste have you filled with the shells of momentary delights? I have filled many. And though I can recall a few of the treats I enjoyed, I can say that virtually none was worth the waste it produced or the sense of endless wanting it perpetuated.
At first I wondered, “If I stop drinking Jamba Juice but nobody else does, will it actually make a difference?”Yes, it will. How do I know this? Because for several weeks I wrote down all of the meaningless purchases that left trails of undue waste in their wake.
This week, start recording the things you buy and throw away, paying special attention to what you buy but don' t need. Write down every single item—even the cough drops and protein bars, flimsy though their packaging may seem. Ask yourself before you make a purchase: “Do I really need this?”If not, forgo the thing; you won' t have to add it to your waste-log later. When you really do need to buy a product, see if you can find an equivalent item in more earth-friendly packaging. Instead of buying that box of four individually packaged Go-GURTs, buy the single pint of yogurt that holds four servings.
Try this for a couple of weeks with an eye on reduction. The weight of waste you shed will likely surprise you. When you compare the trash you produced at the beginning to the trash you didn' t produce once you became more aware of how quickly garbage adds up, you' ll feel hopeful about the possibility of communal waste management. (Just think how much packaging could be saved if your friends and family followed the same plan.) Hope, in my opinion, is the best part of being a big-brained, self-conscious human.
You must be logged in to post a comment.