Most of us like eating food that looks good, vegetables that fit the standard and fruits that are a perfect color pallet. Yet our planet was not created to produce things that look exactly the same. Each of us is different. There is no identical plant or animal. Each snowflake has its very own intricate design. We love the uniqueness of our world yet cannot seem to accept it in food.
Over 1 billion tons of food is estimated to be wasted every year worldwide (Ross, 2013). That number seams unreal especially when one in nine people around the world do not get enough to eat every day ("Know Your World: Facts About World Hunger & Poverty", n.d.). The reason for this are the demands of the supermarkets, who are just providing their consumers (that’s us!) with what they think we want. These supermarkets want to give us what they are sure we will buy so much that they actually provide suppliers with exact parameters like diameter and length of the produce they will accept (Baldwin, Rustemeyer, & Wood, 2014). Sounds a bit like a beauty pageant, wouldn’t you say?
Good thing there are people out there trying to do something about it! Hidden Harvest is an organization, which hires farm workers to collect the 30% of crops that are simply left unharvested ("Home", n.d.). The organization then delivers the harvested crops or those that were left behind because of imperfections to people throughout the Coachella Valley. They are making a difference and making it count.
They are not the only ones. A group of activist and film makers got together to create a documentary “Just Eat It” to raise awareness about the issue. After all, many simply do not know how much food is being wasted because they refuse to buy the slightly brown banana at the store. I used to be one of these people, unaware that regardless of the amount of hunger in the world, good food is simply being thrown out.
It is not only food that we do not value. It is our water as well. Think about it. When was the last time you were thankful for running water in your home? Never? Well, things will change drastically as soon as it is gone. There are some areas of the world that have a high efficiency of water use, such as the desert in the Southwest of the USA ("Fix This", 2013). Yet, the rest of the country does not even think about it much. Not everyone even turns of the tap when brushing their teeth. However, it is not just about the people. The infrastructure is far from perfect. Chicago lost 7 billion gallons of water daily because of pipe leaks in 2013 ("Fix This", 2013). Yet it is the people still! Those who do not pay for their water. Sure, the US residents are spoiled getting water at no cost unlike the rest of the world. Cambodia, for example, started cutting off the water supply from the people who did not pay their water bills ("Fix This", 2013). You can imagine they noticed! Yet fear is not the only way to become more sustainable.
Carrotmobs are a new way of motivating businesses to be more eco-friendly. A carrot mob, introduced initially by Brent Schulkin, is like a deal with a local business (Tsang, 2013). The business agrees to do something sustainable (replace their lighting for energy-saving lamps or update their roof to a more sustainable one) and shoppers run to them in a kind of a flash mob to buy out as much of what they have to sell as possible (Tsang, 2013). While it all started with local businesses, the idea is now used in Australia, in Santa Barbara and a partnership with Unilever is also discussed.
There are so many people out there trying to make a difference and make our world more sustainable. Not everyone can direct a whole movie or build an organization but we can all participate in what others are creating. We can spread the word about the shocking problems in a world, which seems to be splitting in two: half of it is fighting world hunger and the other half – fighting food waste. Which team will you join?
References
Baldwin, G., Rustemeyer, J., & Wood, M. (2014). Just Eat It.
Fix This. (2013). Bloombeer Businessweek, 46-51.
Home. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from http://www.hiddenharvest.org/
Know Your World: Facts About World Hunger & Poverty. The Hunger Project. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from http://www.thp.org/knowledge-center/know-your-world-facts-about-hunger-poverty/
Ross, W. (2013). 'Rejected food' feeds UN officials at Kenyan feast - BBC News. BBC News. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-21524479
Tsang, A. (2013). Activists trade stick for carrotmob. Ft.com. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from https://www.ft.com/content/831894ec-6a03-11e2-a7d2-00144feab49a
