Thoughts on Waste Reduction and Living Within Our Means
In some ways, it's kind of cool to be Danish!
Even though I have lived in the US of A since 1981, I am — in fact — still a Danish citizen, with a Danish passport. I am a permanent resident of the United States; married to a US Citizen; I pay taxes and social security in the US and, as often as not, think of this country as "home."
At the same time, I also think of Denmark as home, and thoroughly enjoy going back "over there" for summer vacations to just hang out, visit family and so forth.
Although I don't have any formal paperwork to the effect, I do feel very much like a dual citizen.
Anyway, one of the things Mrs. Denmarkguy and I notice every time we spend time in Denmark is that while we're there, we generate a tiny fraction of the volume of garbage and waste we do while we're in the USA.
Now, we're pretty good low waste/no waste citizens here in the US, clocking in at far below the national average of about 1,650 pounds of garbage per person, per year. Since I'm in charge of our dump runs, I can actually tell — down to the nearest 10 lbs — that our household of two (sometimes three) creates a little over 1,500lb of trash for all of us. And yes, we compost quite a lot, too... and re-use what we can.
Mostly where we see the difference between the two places is in the volume of packaging we throw away, which is much higher in the US than Denmark, at least for us.
From simple observation, what seems to cause the difference is that packaging in the USA is designed more for convenience and presentation for the retailer than it is for the convenience of the consumer. And it is certainly not designed with waste minimization in mind.
But sometimes waste is about more than just physical garbage, it's also a mindset.
That holds particularly true with food, which is thrown away in huge quantities. Personally? I am almost offended by the idea of wasting food... I was raised with a "you eat what you HAVE till it is GONE, before you start on something new!"
Sure, we might have chicken on Monday and spaghetti on Tuesday, but then the chicken would come back as part of a salad or sandwiches on Wednesday, and the remains boiled to chicken soup for Thursday.
It always surprises me when I come across people who all but refuse to eat leftovers, particularly when they use a rationalization like "it's OK, we can AFFORD it." To me, that's barely a step removed from the middle ages where "being fat" was a status symbol because it meant you could afford to eat more food than you actually needed.
Waste, for me, isn't a bi-product of whether I can afford something... I always just end up back at WHY would you want to waste things?
It's a bit like the individuals (mostly in the southern US) who convert their trucks to Rolling Coal as a protest against environmental restrictions.
Sure, I understand that they are fighting for their freedom but if we take freedom out of the equation, do you actually want to breathe that stuff? Is that the air quality you like?
Yet, when I lived in Texas I actually knew people who had these very expensive modifications done to their vehicles for no reason other than "no damyankee's gonna tell me how to do my business!"
Waste, for me, is one of those things where sense transcends other forms of "protest." All other things aside, does it make SENSE to waste, when you don't have to?
I think not...
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
How about YOU? What's your opinion about waste? Do you think we generate too much garbage? Or is it just inevitable? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210206 00:10 PST
0175/1418
When I was a child, every family in the small village where I lived used some "strategies" to reduce the waste. This was not because at that time there was the idea to save the planet from the waste, but because it was necessary to save money to grow up the entire family. Those strategies, today, can continue to help the family balance and, at the same time, to take care of the planet. For example, we have a lot of different recipes to no put the "old" food on the trash. Just for example, we use the rind of the parmigiano cheese (here it's common to use the parmigiano when we cook pasta) inside the soup to give it a good tasty ^_^
I never understood the appeal of "rolling coal" despite my disdain for authoritarians among environmentalists. Fuel efficiency is good for my budget, and must be weighed against my transportation needs. Here where I live, I often wish I had a 4x4 truck. But I also dislike the noise from my neighbors with their modified exhaust rumbling through the woods on their drives in and out.
Packaging in the US is a mess. In some cases, it is based on stupid laws. In most, it is marketeering. We all hate opening them, though, and special tools are even made to get into a lot of blister packs. paper can cardboard are recyclable and renewable. Modern lumber companies devote a lot of effort to replanting, and tree farms treat fast-growing species for paper like a long-term crop. There seems to be a perverse hatred for paper lingering from the tree-hugger anti-lumber wing of environmentalists, but plastic is pure waste most of the time.
My friends with kids often have huge piles of toys, none of which are anywhere near as durable as my old metal Tonka trucks were, and while I envy the quantity compared to what I had growing up, the quality is simply lacking. They break. They get thrown away. They get replaced with more cheap Chinese crap.
We also have a problem of Karens and authoritarians running urban planning. People cannot live where they shop and work anymore in most towns. Commutes are almost mandatory. The result is urban sprawl as more and more subdivisions are built to accommodate people, and more and more roads are built to get them from A to B. Economic segregation is a massive problem contributing to fuel use, construction costs, and the need for more disposable packaging as people feed themselves in the course of a day.
I hate to waste food, and as a result I have become very creative with any leftovers. And yes waste in general does have a huge affect on our mentality. Thanks for these lovely reflections @denmarkguy xx
Curated for #naturalmedicine by @trucklife-family .
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It appalls me how much waste is in packaging... if the government truly had balls theyd mandate against it.
I am with you on this. The majority of my waste that goes to landfill - not all of it, but definitely most of it - is cat litter and piddle pads (Maggie uses pads instead of litter), and I'm OK with that, it's a necessary thing. But I'm very mindful of reduce/reuse/recycling/compost, and poor to boot so no frivolous shopping; people who are just living their lives without that being a big chunk of their brain space easily produce so much waste here, even when they are also poor and so not shopping all the time for funsies. I used to have a neighbor who was elderly and so did most of her necessary purchases either delivered from the store or online shopping, and holy cow did she make a lot of trash. She wasn't a rich lady, it was all just packaging madness around groceries and cat food and the like.
I have a habit of emailing companies about their packaging, and some of them seem to listen, but some of them totally don't. I emailed my favorite milk company (Kalona Organic) asking that they not use plastic bottles anymore. Their response was that "customers like to see the product/see the cream on top." Honey I'm your customer and I'm telling you the eco nerds and health nuts buying cream top, pasture raised organic milk care more about the plastic, but okay.