Once you have nurtured a plant, maybe from a tiny seed or even from something that looks dead or dormant and encouraged it to produce fruit or vegetables, that end up on your plate providing you with a tasty meal, wasting food seems wrong.
There are good reasons why wasting food feels wrong, for those that lack this sentiment, then the chances are they are wasting money as well as food. There are also hidden costs that many people may be unaware of.
When you discard food you are actually wasting more than the money that you spent on the food item at the checkout.
(Food is not really classified as an item by me but more about that another day).
- Discarded food, is often sent to landfill.
Your household waste also needs collection and transportation to the landfill site.
Once land is used for landfill it cannot easily be used for other purposes in the future.
- The food that is bought from supermarkets has factors in its cost that are both financial and environmental.
It also has had an effect because of the resources used to produce it.
These are things like water*, fertilizers, chemicals and use of land etc.
*Water has to be cleaned and pumped from place to place. Some of the fruit and vegetables that you buy would have been watered out of necessity, some are watered as part of a routine or even to meet the demands of the purchaser of the food product, especially with things like potatoes.
- When you buy vegetables and fruit that are uniform in size and shape, other less perfect looking pieces are not on display. So even if you are willing to pay more for it to look immaculate the other pieces of fruit and vegetables need to be sold at a lower cost or used up in some other way. If not they might end up discarded and if not composted or converted in some other way they end up - on landfill sites.
