Today and Yesterday

Although I have mentioned before that America has not conducted a comprehensive study on food waste since 1997, the EPA does publish a report on “Municipal Solid Waste in the United States “every year, the most recent from 2012. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is simply garbage, excluding industrial, hazardous, or construction waste. I hope that by now you are not surprised when I tell you that food waste is the largest component of discards at 21.1 %. Understandably, 21.1% is not a particularly outrageous number, so hopefully these additional percentages will clarify the situation. In composting and recycling, only 4.8% of food waste generated is recovered, whereas 64.6% of paper is recycled. The amount of paper recovered is equivalent to subtracting 27 million cars from the roads in a year. While America’s recycling has skyrocketed over the years, why has the number of community composting programs decreased from 2002 to 2012 when food waste has increased? If we are such diligent recyclers, then we can certainly become avid composters! However, most people are probably reluctant to place a stinky compost container in their backyard, which is why local governments need to get involved. Just imagine: resting on the curb next to your trash can and blue recycling bin, is a lovely green bin filled with food waste to be emptied into a truck and taken to the nearest composting site.

I also read Nancy MacDonald’s article “What a Waste,” and let me just say, it is the most strongly-worded piece I’ve read so far. MacDonald is pushing the fine line between passionate and angry-accusatory-offensive. For instance, she condemns the destruction of crops to increase market prices as a “legal, if disgusting, measure” and criticizes the fact that “Laws, perversely, seem to bolster food waste.” However, MacDonald argument does remind me of some important points such as the relationship between cheap prices, caloric intake, and food waste. Before 1952, “Americans spent more than 20 percent of their incomes on food. Last year that portion hit an all-time low of 5.6 percent—even as the number of calories available per person per day rose by 9 percent (In Pakistan, by comparison, the percent of spending on food can reach 75 percent of income).” Like many other sources, MacDonald mentions the significance of “ugly” food which is discarded by growers for being “outsized, double-lobed, too small, too big, too wonky, with eyes, not perfectly smooth, [or] not perfectly rounded.” Hey! I’m most of those things and I’m fine (and the produce is too!). Nowadays, people are always talking about embracing your imperfections, but how can we apply that idea to people if we don’t even eat externally imperfect produce?

Ugly Lemon wants to be eaten too! (Photo by Uli Westphal)

My last source, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, is quite different froom everything else I’ve read because Susan Strasser focuses on how the culture of throwing away things has dramatically shifted in America. She analyzes old household manuals and cookbooks to formulate an idea of a certain time period. I was utterly fascinated as Strasser explained the ways Americans used food waste as far back as the 1800s. On the farm, food scraps were saved in a pail to feed the animals. As for the smell? Strasser says that back then people weren’t fussy; “even the most refined could scarely have been squeamish about malodorous garbage.” Furthermore, urban food waste was also eaten by animals. How? Get this: scavenger pigs, goats, dogs and cows roamed the city streets, eating any accessible trash. Sadly, these scavenger snimals were banned by most cities after the civil war, despite their extraordinary effectiveness in cleaning up garbage. Additionally, Strasser describes how most households saved their cooking grease to reuse or make into candles and soap. However, after industrialization, many families turned to commercial products rather than make their own. She laments how the change from “home to factory, from production to consumption, from handicraft to purchasing” has caused “Kitchen scraps, reused in the more productive household of the nineteenth century, [to be] discarded with the packaging or ground up and washed down the drain.” Strasser’s research has enlightned me on our frugal ways of the past. While I don’t advocate letting feral pigs loose in New York City, I do believe we can learn a great deal from our traditional roots. For example, we can fully encourage giving food scraps to pig farms and not ban the practice like Great Britain did in 2001. We should cook creative traditional recipes, such as bread pudding and potato skin soup. Perhaps we can all adopt the Depression Era motto “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!”