Siobhan Peterson-Walsh

EDGI 541
Spring 2015

Please, world, can I have some

more?
Working as a barista in a downtown Starbucks one hot summer
Friday night, I became privy to the injustice, inhumanity and
unsustainability that is restaurant waste and what has become the
face of human food consumption as a whole. I had spent 8 hours
busting my butt to serve customer after customer who lined up to
spend 10 dollars a day on a single drink, who ordered their croissants
heated at a particular temperature and who wouldnt think twice about
handing a drink back to have another one made if they didnt like the
1st one. On this particular night, I was traying the pastries for the next
day and checking expiration dates on the salads and drinks when a
woman on the patio outside caught my eye. She was obviously
homeless, all her belonging on her back, her clothes like dirty paper
were awkwardly folded around her. She moved across the patio
discreetly offering a disheveled cup around to people, her eyes cast to
the ground. Something in the way she moved captivated me, like she
was, at the same time, weightless and carrying the weight of the
world. She went table to table and person to person and approached
each one with hope despite rejection after repulsion after aversion. In
the heat of the summer, rejected by everyone around her, she sat
down on the ground, leaned up against the bench in the middle of the
patio, this beautiful, if tragic, human was motionless in her exhaustion,
hunger and thirst while life swirled around her with their Italian named
drinks, special temperature pastries and $10 drinks.
This woman sat for over an hour, motionless, while it got dark. I
was gripped by this guilt because I had so much in front of me and
such shame that no one had even looked at this woman. Then it came
time for me to bag garbage and I had to throw out everything we
hadnt sold and everything that was expired. I had been avoiding this
all night and my manager finally did this. How could we throw ALL this
out? It was something like 4 salads, 7 croissants, 12 sandwiches, 4
cookies, 4 brownies and so on. How could we throw all this out when
there was this woman, starving, sitting on our doorstep?? I fished out a
couple items, bagged them and started out the door when my
manager stopped me. You know we arent allowed to do that. Surely
this couldnt be true? We were just going to throw it away! According
to corporate policy, we had to put everything in the trash. Nothing

could be donated (unless arranged by corporate themselves). That

night, I fished food out of the garbage, paid for it, and gave it to the
woman on the patio. That night, I realized the ungodly unbalance
between bountiful caf tables and empty bellies.
My interest in massive food waste and puzzling irony of rampant
world-wide hunger stems from this experience. While I have been
wrestling the social injustice of this and, for the most part, understand
the economic implications, I have only recently begun to understand
the significant impact poor food waste disposal and resource
management has on the environment. Our individualistic, consumer
society sets the values for our culture and with profit/ money driving
those values, MORE is better had become the dominant value. More
money, more power, more food and so on. To have a lot of something
has become symbolic of status, wealth and power and to have more
just means to have more of the former and, thus, more valuable. The
ease with which we have been able to get more has increased the ease
with which we dispose of things even though the space where we can
put garbage is diminishing. Disposability is key for those Westerners
who are interested in saving time and energy.
Humans, with their science and technology have created a
situation in which we can get more than what we nee, just in case,
consume only what we want, and dispose of the rest. Ever heard your
mother say, Dont worry, dear, only eat what you can. As our sizes
get larger in extra larges and never ending refills and we go to all you
can eat buffets, people all around are not getting enough to meet basic
needs. We have forfeited fresh and local for convenience of buying in
bulk where we buy as much as possible, whether it is needed or not.
We eat and purchase in this way for few reasons other than it is a
good value. Our eyes have become bigger than our stomachs in our
portion size with value meals, supersized portions, bulk boxed food.
Our voracious need for MORE can only be matched by the irony of the
colossal amount we are throwing away and the outrageous number of
people going hungry everyday. This social issue also has serious
environmental impacts. On October 16th the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) has designated a World Food Day to call
attention to ending hunger and turning up the volume on global food
waste which they say is bigger than we think
(http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts). It is
interesting, the distinction made between food loss and food waste.
The former being unintentional loss of food stuffs usually because of
lack of communication or poor harvesting practices while the later is
intentional throwing out of edible items, most often done by large
chain corporations and food wastage refers to both of them together.
(http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196220/icode/). According to the
UNEP and the World Resource Institute (WRI) 1/3 of all food produced is
wasted which translates to a $1 trillion worth of food wasted worldwide

every year. Similar to the Eco Footprint project that we have learned
about, a study called the Food Wastage Footprint was the first to
consider food wastage from an environmental perspective. They looked
particularly at climate, water and land use and biodiversity and found
Eachyear,foodthatisproducedbutnoteatenguzzlesupavolumeofwater

equivalenttotheannualflowofRussia'sVolgaRiverandisresponsibleforadding
3.3billiontonnesofgreenhousegasestotheplanet'satmosphere
(http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196220/icode/).Accordingtothe
Footprint,Thecarbonfootprintoffoodproducedandnoteatenisestimatedat3.3
billiontonsofgreenhousegases:makingfoodwastagethethirdtopGHGemitterafter
theU.S.andChina(http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf).Itisclearthis
issuegoesbeyondbitingoffmorethanwecanchew.

Ifwehopetosolvethisproblem,thatofpoor,unethicalpracticesregarding
theproduction,consumptionanddisposaloffoodstuffs,itwilltakeacrosssector,
collaborativeeffortinwhichthecommongoodmustsupercedethatofthe
individual."Wesimplycannotallowonethirdofallthefoodweproducetogoto
wasteorbelostbecauseofinappropriatepractices,when870millionpeoplego
hungryeveryday(http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196220/icode/)."Some
suggestionstohelpincludereductionoffoodwastage,reusewheneverpossible
andrecyclingandrecovery.Allrequireachangeinperspective,fromthetop
down.Fromthepoliticalandeconomicarenatoprovideincentivesforlocal
farmerstobecomeintegralpartsoftheircommunity,toofferfinancialsupportfor
thetransitionperiod,andtorequireaccountabilityandlimitationsonlarge
corporationsandfoodchains.Localcommunitiesshouldworktogethertomake
growingyourownfoodorpurchasingfromlocalfarmsamoreconvenient
activity.Individually,anychangeinmindset,iffollowedthrough,canchangebad
habitsintopositiveonesandinfluencethosearoundthem.Educationcanhelpall
inallthesearenas:togeneratetheinterestandperspective,providetheknowledge
tomakesustainablepracticepossibleandbuildtheplatformfromwhichtoensure
futuregenerationscontinuetheefforts.