I guess i have been on an anti-waste kick lately. Things like the recession help keep such things fresh on the mind. While i am one who actually saves/invests i actually like recessions less than most (i.e. i am hurt more than many non-saving types) I do believe that recession and shortage is a good thing in a way, it makes people become less wasteful though of course people have extraordinarily short memories as evidenced in one of my other recent posts (the Afghan cook who stopped saving food once he got a raise).
I recently read two articles on NPR that struck a wasteful chord with me, one about how wasteful the author had been previous to the recession and the second about how the person being written about turned some people's waste into other peoples good fortune. The first was kind of typical, a person who is/was probably semi-righteous in some leftist way but still bought stuff at the gap, scorned those who would wash n save zip lock bags (the same scorn i saw volunteers have in the peace corps when locals would save/reuse zip lock bags), etc these types annoy me the most... they have this righteous air about them but only for some things. The other article was a great example of how an organization used food that other places would throw out, even house holds would throw out, and then giving it to people who really do need or are at least willing to use the food.
I work for a development organization and am the only American in it, and by most estimates probably the most conservative (fiscally, not necessarily socially and certainly not environmentally) so most of my colleagues have an air of self-righteousness (which in some cases is justified if not perhaps a bit unbalanced [and the case could be made that i am sometimes one of them]) but there are a few that just amaze me, or perhaps that just rub my specific pet peeves raw. It needs to be said that in some respects these people perhaps contribute more to the development community than I just by virtue of the fact that they are more gregarious in their work. Some of the pet peeves are the refusal to eat leftovers, opting to either feed it to the dog or just throw it out (they were amused that i use the fruit leftover from compote that we have to make things like apple butter, fruit smoothies, etc) this is something that just amazes me.
I am not sure how to end this post, it is not like i have a solution to the cultural problem of waste but it is something i will perhaps never get over.
