Whose afraid of the big black bag?

Only three living beings live in my house (excluding an array of houseplants), namely my husband, my dog and myself but every week when it is rubbish day it really scares me how much stuff gets thrown away. My local council offers two main recycling services. The one involves placing all paper, glass, metal and certain plastics into a bag separate from all other waste. The other involves recycling food waste only - they put all of it into a massive communal compost heap. Despite the fact that we partake in all this recycling, the speed at which waste is produced sometimes really scares me - especially when I consider that my husband is hardly ever home for meals. 

One contributing factor to this heap of garbage which I particularly hate is the notion of the expiry date. I understand that most foodstuffs become dangerous to eat once they've passed a certain date but I personally believe that the dates encourage a rampant wastage of food. These dates all too often seem to be way too conservative thereby encouraging people to throw away perfectly edible food in fear of keeling over frothing at the mouth with green food poisoning-induced foam. The other day I heard a shocking statistic that more than half of all food ends up being thrown away uneaten. I really hope that that number was calculated wrongly!

A contributing factor to all this waste is the price of food. In Peter Singer's book titled The Ethics of What We Eat he describes how chicken used to be a special treat reserved for Sunday family gatherings because it was so expensive. Today people think nothing of eating meat several times a day and chicken from places like KFC is cheaper than buying fresh fruit and vegetables. Recently there was talk in the British media of the possibility of putting a 'sin-tax' on junk food similar to that on alcohol and cigarettes in a bid to reduce obesity rates. While that would surely be hugely criticised as another nanny-state move, it wouldn't necessarily be such a bad idea.

One parting thought is the idea of how easy it is for companies to think a little more innovatively in order to reduce waste. An example of this is Innocent Fruit smoothies. The company recently removed the plastic ring pull in their cartons, thereby saving truckloads of plastic from being produced. Simple re-engineering with virtuous results. More companies need to come up with more things like this even if  only to impress customers like me!