Time to Stop the Wastage
Accepting only what we need is a good habit to cultivate. Uncle at a daily lunch served at Peace Connect Senior Activity Centre.
I recently watched Chicken a la Carte a six-minute film that won the Most Popular Film Award in the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival. It was a film that brought tears and feelings of guilt and grief to many who watched it.
The film depicts how a rag and bone man collects the leftovers of a chicken restaurant daily to feed his hungry family and other children in the slum they live in.
The film started with the scene of restaurant customers who ordered more than they could eat and leaving behind perfectly good food that was eventually thrown away to be picked up by the rag and bone man. The slum children were eagerly awaiting the man’s return with the garbage bin of leftovers. When the long awaited food finally arrived, the kids dug into the garbage bin and then happily ate, licking the meat off the chicken bones they found.
The expressions of satisfaction and joy, as the kids ate, were unforgettable and struck a chord in the hearts of many who watched the film which is said to be based on a true story.
The issues of poverty and wastage of vast amounts of food in our everyday life are not uncommon among countries; the difference is in the extent of problem and how each government and its people cope with and address the issues.
In Singapore, the amount of food wastage has reached record high. The National Environment Agency (NEA) reported that more than 700,000 tonnes were generated in 2012. This is 26 percent higher than five years ago and far outpaced the 16 percent increase in population over the same period. The food wasted is estimated to be enough to fill more than 14,000 double-decker buses.
Wastage of food is observed almost everywhere – homes, food production and distribution businesses, food courts, hawker centres, restaurants, and supermarkets.
Many of us Singaporeans pride ourselves to be food lovers living in a food paradise. But we do not appear to love our food so much as many routinely do not finish our food and throw them away at mealtimes at home, community events, wedding dinners, and buffets.
Food wastage is observed even among those who are believed to be in poverty in Singapore. Inside the flats of some needy residents who routinely receive grocery donations, social workers and volunteers found bags of groceries including rice – unconsumed and occupying much of the living space.
There was a recent outcry against a few charities who threw away donated bags of rice which were kept for too long and infested by pests.
I am myself guilty of food wastage when at many functions, I had often left my food either unfinished or untouched because I had to interact with other guests or because I had already eaten elsewhere. I am also guilty of the times when I threw away food in the refrigerator that I bought which I did not have time to cook or consume.
Why We Waste Food
Journalist Jonathan Bloom shed some light on this question when he was interviewed on his book, American Wasteland. Bloom said that people waste food because they take their food for granted and feel they can afford it. Bloom said that people squander so much of their food because their attitudes about food are superficial; that fresh food must look flawless and should be discarded once some part of it is blemished.
I believe that what Bloom shared applies too to Singapore.
As our country becomes more affluent, our attitude towards food and other material things have grown indifferent and careless. The stories that our seniors share about how they survived on simply sweet potatoes or tapioca leaves during wartimes and poverty no longer touch the hearts of many younger ones.
In our busyness, we have little time to reflect and feel sorry for all the things we may not need but keep acquiring and discarding.
The fact that one in eight people in the world suffered from insufficient food and chronic under-nourishment in 2010-2012 is news that is foreign to us living in the Singapore food paradise.
Why We Should Stop the Wastage
There are good reasons why cutting food waste matters. Reducing our own food waste an easy way for us to trim our bills and divert our monies for other purposes. To me, it is a wise lifestyle choice of voluntary simplicity that often leads to less stress and a greater sense of liberation from consumerism and materialism.
Cutting food waste is beneficial not only financially. Environmentally, the United Nations reported that food waste often lead to wasteful use of chemicals such as pesticides and fertilisers; more fuel used to transport food and more rotting food, giving out more methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that is 23 times more potent than CO2, causing a greater negative impact on our environment.
What We Can Do
In addition to urging government and businesses to do their part to adopt and enforce more measures to reverse this alarming food wastes trend, there are some steps that each of us can take to buck the trend:
1. Buy only what we need – experts have advised us to plan meals, use shopping lists, avoid impulse buys and not succumb to marketing promotions that seduce us to buy more than we need.
2. Order and eat only what we need when we eat out.
3. Pay attention to the “use by” dates of the food we buy to avoid having to discard them later.
4. Preserve the shelf life of purchased food items or leftovers by using the freezer.
5. Compost food scraps to make organic fertiliser instead of using chemical fertiliser for the plants in our homes.
6. Donate food items that we are unlikely to eat but are still in good condition to local food collection and distribution organisations such as Food From The Heart (www.foodheart.org) and Food Bank Singapore (www.foodbank.sg). By the same token, resist the urge to ask for or accept things that we do not need, just because they are free.
Cultivating the habit of reducing food wastage is not only about our pockets and our environment. It is a discipline of self-control that if cultivated, will further help hone us closer to a people of character and principles.
Denise Phua Lay Peng/ My Paper’ Fortnightly Column/ 7 Aug 2013