I was made to feel guilty as a boy surreptitiously slipping blancmange to Wags, the school dog, for in those days, Armenians were said to be starving.
Today, a lot more people are going to bed hungry, and still I can’t bear to throw food out. I was caught the other day rescuing a bit of chicken from the garbage.
It was fine. All it needed was a wipe with a damp cloth.
Too many people are spooked by the spectre of campylobacter. Too many don’t understand that cheese is supposed to be mouldy.
And much of the blame lies with the “best before” stickers that are slapped carelessly on everything so that it must be chucked out to make room for more food to waste.
The point of bringing all this up is kitchen or food “scraps,” the disposal of which is confounding local politicians and seems to be on the verge of sending regional government itself to the tipping place.
Most of us take care to wash, fold, lift and separate anything recyclable. So food scraps surely are pretty much all that’s left of what in more vulgar days we used to call garbage.
The bureaucrats of the Capital Regional District, though, recommend sending most of the scraps off to Richmond to be “processed” in some way while Saanich is keeping its closer, in Cobble Hill.
The concern seems to be that the Hartland landfill can’t take much more. If scraps from the kitchen are kept out of it, it might be able to handle those from the bathroom, bedroom or family pistol range longer.
Some councillors are balking at the CRD staff recommendation, concerned that, among other things, the barges and trucks for getting rid of the scraps will add to greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions of the scraps themselves have already been found unacceptable to local residents.
It’s interesting that the CRD is facing this disposal quandary after deciding that rotting matter is to be banned from the landfill in 2015. The cart has been placed, firmly, before the horse.
Waste disposal is a problem everywhere, though. In Halifax, restaurants are threatening closure because of a threatened 36 per cent disposal fee hike.
In Bangalore, India, where the population grew to 9.6 million in 2011 from 4.3 million in 2001, landfills are full and garbage contractors are dumping their loads on the street. In Calcutta, a major artery is blocked by garbage.
All landfills leak, making things unpleasant at least for those in proximity. But in Flathead County, Mont., they’ve found that waste from septic tanks speeds up decomposition in landfills and produces energy.
Hauling totes to the curb is the last most of us see of our garbage. Some households have the luxury of a garbage disposal unit, but maybe not for long. They’ve already been banned in Toronto because of high nitrogen levels in Lake Ontario.
The Canadian Water Attitudes Study reported in 2011 that three-quarters of Canadians flush stuff that they shouldn’t down the toilet.
People who live in parts of the world that are considered “developed” are a take-away, throw-away lot. The waste industry is a commercial business and disposal, including recycling, has to make a profit.
Nature wastes nothing, but human beings do. The World Bank reported last week that the world loses or wastes between 25 per cent and 33 per cent of food produced. Cereals account for more than half of it.
In sub-Saharan Africa, most food is lost in production and processing. Only five per cent is wasted at the consumer level.
In North America, 61 per cent of food loss is stuff thrown out of fridges or cupboards.
And when crops go to waste, so does the water that’s used to grow them. In parts of the U.S. — the Midwest and California — there are severe water shortages already.
We’ve become accustomed to California fruits and vegetables among the bounty in our supermarkets. Our choices are taken for granted because of the oversupply on their shelves.
And when we turn our groceries into kitchen scraps at the best-before date, we don’t think of the starving Armenians or anybody else.
