Waste not Want not

Tales from a student on the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) MSc in Sustainability and Behaviour Change (SBC)

Ever since sitting in a local council meeting and hearing the council leader justify the lack of food waste collection across the whole of Wilshire by preaching don’t buy too much food as a means of eliminating food waste I have been seething.  Selecting the Food Waste critical review assignment should give me the ammunition to counter attack (betraying my military credentials) in question time at the next council meeting.  

So to the assignment which is an exercise in trying to understand arcane definitions over which there is no agreement on what is waste – avoidable could be eaten but isn’t, waste at point of disposal avoidable or unavoidable but still going to composting/digestion now not waste but recycling  or to landfill where it will create greenhouse gases but could become recycling if the landfill has some form of gas collection.  As a break from the mind bending definition of waste I went shopping at our weekly food market and here is my food waste score:

Behaviour	Score
There is a list but on several bits of paper as ideas and locations for sustainable shopping are thrown about between myself and my wife. +3 Risk of missing something off – high. -1	2
Go to shed to get my bike and trailer, it has a puncture – it’s raining, Could fix puncture or walk but market bags are heavy.  Decide to drive the 1km to the market -3 but the car is a hybrid +2 (not strictly food waste but is part of provisioning system – where did logistics come into this)	-1
At the fruit and veg stall hand over the bag for life and prevent the stall holders using single use plastic bags +3 Then bought 2 good looking mangos – forgetting we already have 2 mangos at home from last week -2	1
At market go to local market garden producers +4 good spuds but covered in earth (authentic) and no room left in the bag for life. I take one of their plastic bags -2 but it is compostable +1 . However, experience of these bags on my compost heap is they take years to rot down so it will end up in landfill creating methane -2 😦	1
Off to Little Eco Shop where they sell package free.  Feel good stocking up on oats and dried fruit shovelling them into the brown paper bags provided by the shop +5. Don’t feel quite so good when a lady comes in who has brought her own containers -2	3
Finally off to get milk from the butcher, not so weird, the butcher fills up reusable glass bottles with milk from a local dairy  +4 But I’ve forgotten the bottle, off to the supermarket for a plastic container -5	-1

My total score 6 – you’re right that isn’t the sum of the score but using formula ∑ = ∆ ± n²∂ and validated by RSFMK¹ method my score is moderated.   Back at home to grapple with the complexities of Quested et al I’m not surprised that we waste so much food.