The Mentality of Wastefulness

I admit I have an ironic (for an American) pet peeve, wastefulness.
I also admit that in some respects I am not the most efficient individual (mostly in terms of energy consumption [though I am pretty frugal for an American] and food [mainly its packaging]) but there are some pretty basic things that get to me especially in these desperately poor developing countries.
Our janitor (who has now been promoted to janitor and cook), before used to collect all the uneaten food at our organization and take it home to his family and he would talk about how wasteful it was to throw the food away (saving leftovers is a somewhat foreign concept here). Since his promotion I now see him regularly throwing food away, and he has ceased saving the cans to sell to a recycling center, presumably because he has more money now. This is something that is just unfathomable to me, we could easily find one or two beggars around the corner and take the food to them (and I am sure they would be willing to come to us) but instead it gets thrown away. One of the more sobering things I have seen recently was a few kids huddled around a pile of trash making a small pile of inedible looking potatoes. Apparently they were picking out these rotten and bug infested potatoes to take home (hopefully for their livestock but most likely not) and my organization (a "humanitarian organization") throws away its leftover food.
I see this mentality among the "richer" people in developing countries all the time, their absolute repulsion at the idea of taking uneaten food home in carton (like after eating at a restaurant) or their unwillingness to save leftovers after a meal at home for the next day. It has made me sick in the past and still does make me queasy to see children picking through a garbage pile for bits of food and then see perfectly good food being thrown out.