It's the Environment, Stupid

An article which shows that nothing in economics is simple, and unfortunately, corn-based ethanol is probably not going to save the planet. But I don't know if an unregulated, government intervention-less free market will be any better. An uncorrupted, uninfluenced-by-the-farm-lobby government would be a start in the right direction...

The BBC has a new programme (program) about the millions of tonnes (tons) of food waste we produce every year. Like many human qualities, this behaviour (behavior) has dire consequences for the environment.

Here are some stats from ENGLAND (with some translations by me in parenthesis), so you could probably multiply them by about 10 (an exaggeration...I hope) to get a good idea of US waste:


Waste not, want not

19% of all household waste is from food

10% of people admit they throw out food

6m tonnes of domestic food is wasted a year

30% of all supermarket purchases go straight in the bin (garbage)

15% is waste from the dinner plate or discarded leftovers from the fridge

15% is inedible waste – peelings, bones, tea bags, coffee filters

15p of every £1 spent in a supermarket is put in the bin (equivalent to about 15 cents per dollar)

70% of all fridges are too warm

1 to 5C recommended fridge temperature (I forgot how to convert to Fahrenheit)

250,000 tonnes a year of food waste from supermarkets and corner shops

1.9m tonnes a year of food waste from pubs, restaurants and food outlets

£460 a year – cost of food waste per adult in Britain (about $930)

£23bn a year – total value of food waste (about $46,381,726,857)

And, finally, an article about "a plastic graveyard the size of Texas". Really, it's about the unimaginable plastic pollution that is destroying our oceans. This scientist is pretty cynical. You know it's bad when they start out with "We are damned to a future..."