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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete
For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of […]
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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo
This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]
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White Dwarf Issue 75: 04th July 2015 – White Dwarf
White Dwarf 75 cometh and with it Warhammer Age of Sigmar! They were the End Times. The world-that-was is gone. The Age of Myth is passed. The Mortal Realms endure an Age of Chaos and yet hope remains… That’s right, at long last, White Dwarf 75 arrives to usher in the Age of Sigmar. And […]
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Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog – Cesar Millan
After more than 9 seasons as TV’s Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan has a new mission: to use his unique insights about dog psychology to create stronger, happier relationships between humans and their canine companions. Now in paperback, this inspirational and practical guide draws on thousands of training encounters around the world to present 98 essential lessons. Taken together, they will […]
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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread
PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis Inside this Instaread: Summary of entire book, Introduction to the important people in the book, Key Takeaways and Analysis of the Key Takeaways. […]
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Codex: Dark Angels (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop
The First Legion of old, the Dark Angels have fought in the Emperor’s name for ten thousand years. Yet within the shrouded ranks of the Chapter there lurks an ancient secret, one so terrible that should it ever be revealed it would mean damnation for the Chapter. Codex: Dark Angels is your comprehensive guide […]
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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier
From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]
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How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend – Monks of New Skete
For nearly a quarter century, How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend has been the standard against which all other dog-training books have been measured. This new, expanded edition, with a fresh new design and new photographs throughout, preserves the best features of the original classic while bringing the book fully up-to-date. The result: the […]
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Trident K9 Warriors – Mike Ritland & Gary Brozek
As Seen on “60 Minutes”! As a Navy SEAL during a combat deployment in Iraq, Mike Ritland saw a military working dog in action and instantly knew he’d found his true calling. Ritland started his own company training and supplying dogs for the SEAL teams, U.S. Government, and Department of Defense. He knew that fewer […]
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A Big Little Life – Dean Koontz
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In a profound, funny, and beautifully rendered portrait of a beloved companion, bestselling novelist Dean Koontz remembers the golden retriever who changed his life. A retired service dog, Trixie was three when Dean and his wife, Gerda, welcomed her into their home. She was superbly trained, but her greatest gifts couldn’t […]
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The inventor of the Segway, who is described as our era’s Thomas Edison, has been working for years on one of our biggest global challenges. The documentary SlingShot shines a light on Kamen and his work. Source article: SlingShot: Inventor Dean Kamen’s 15-year quest to solve the world’s safe water crisis ; ; ;
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SlingShot: Inventor Dean Kamen’s 15-year quest to solve the world’s safe water crisis
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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
If you’re like me, you writhe in guilt-ridden anguish each time you forget to bring your canvas tote to the grocery store. But in the rare times we do remember our reusable bags, Americans tend not to think much about what we actually put inside them, according to a new survey. The takeaway: We waste a lot of extra food (and money) simply because we don’t shop often enough.
As big of a problem as it is, food waste rarely makes the news. There was some buzz a while back about France’s ban on grocery stores throwing out edible food, but the numbers show that this is only a small part of the problem. Americans vastly underestimate their own food waste, which turns out to be driven mostly by a desire to avoid getting sick—even though saving money is also a top priority. That means we end up stocking our shelves with more than we need to ensure we’ll always have something fresh when we want it.
That sort of behavior is encouraged at bulk stores like Costco and Walmart, which operate on the myth that buying in bulk helps you save money. But new evidence shows that the push for huge quantities of cheap, high-quality food has caused us to be more wasteful than ever. Simply put: We’re throwing away more in food waste than we are saving by buying in bulk.
“People almost entirely neglect the cost of the food they’re throwing away from their kitchen,” says Victoria Ligon of the University of Arizona, who led the new study. “If you throw away a meal because you’ve eaten out when you weren’t planning to, the cost of that restaurant meal is higher than you think. People don’t account for that at all.”
Ligon’s study examined shopping patterns of several households through in-depth interviews and food diaries. The results found that people are generally too ambitious in their grocery shopping—buying ingredients for meals days or weeks in advance—when our brains and appetites are hard-wired for little more than the next meal. Our lives get busy, we may schedule a few impromptu evenings out with friends, and suddenly we have a pile of furry cucumbers at the bottom of the fridge. As most people who have ever cooked a meal know, planning meals days in advance is almost impossible.
“Every single person I talked to in my study felt very uncomfortable at the idea of throwing away food,” says Ligon. “We have very strong norms in our culture around not wasting.” But Ligon says people shouldn’t feel guilty: “This is not a problem that stems from individual apathy. It’s a structural problem.”
The bulk stores know this—their whole business model is to trick us into buying more than we need, and all the better if the food seems healthy and good for the planet. During a green push several years ago, Walmart became the biggest grocery store chain in the country. In May, Costco—that wonderland of 9-pound cases of bison jerky and terrier-sized tubs of licorice—became the leading purveyor of organic grocery items, dethroning Whole Foods. Walmart’s Sam’s Club stores, which operate on a similar membership-based, it-takes-two-people-to-push-a-cart style of warehouse retail, is reportedly moving in a similar direction and greatly expanding its organic offerings. Organic food is becoming big business, at least partly because stores are able to charge higher markups.
Which brings us back to food waste. As much as 40 percent of America’s food supply gets thrown away every day, with perishable items like dairy, breads, meats, fruits, and vegetables leading the way. The total annual bill of food waste for consumers is a whopping $162 billion, which works out to about $1,300 to $2,300 per family per year. Clearly, that much food could feed a lot of people who otherwise go hungry.
But even that huge sum doesn’t factor in knock-on effects: Wasting food means we’re throwing away money, but we’re also throwing away 35 percent of the nation’s fresh water supply and 300 million gallons of oil each year. That makes tackling food waste the low-hanging fruit amid growing concern over drought and climate change. Next to paper and yard trimmings, food takes up the biggest share of the nation’s landfills—and contributes about 20 percent of the country’s methane emissions.
Ligon thinks she’s found the start of a solution: Just shop more often.
“When you’re talking about food, feeling really plays a big role. Things like predicting how hungry you are, your appetite, and what you’re in the mood for—in the future—turn out to be very challenging,” Ligon says. “If you’re shopping more frequently, you can purchase food that is meant to be eaten in a shorter time frame.”
But there’s a catch. Ligon’s research also revealed that people regularly buy groceries from three to seven different stores. With so many choices, there’s an incentive to overbuy at each stop—especially if you don’t plan on being back for a few days. We’ve all done this: You go into Trader Joe’s planning to buy some nectarines, and you come out with an armful of specialty potato chips and four frozen pizzas.
Ligon says same-day food delivery services like AmazonFresh (which charges $299 per year for free deliveries over $50 and provides you with a magic wand by which you can place your orders) and soon-to-emerge smartfridges that suggest recipes for you based on your food that’s about to go bad (like this one Samsung showcased in 2013) might be among the most promising ways to cut down on waste, with big rewards in water, energy, and climate change—and money.
After all, you can’t waste what you don’t buy in the first place.
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By Suzanne Jacobson 2 Jul 2015commentsShare
Hey there, Cuba. Now that we’ve cleared up that whole embargo thing — you know, the one that left you economically crippled for decades — we’re gonna go ahead and ruin what little good came out of it. That cool?
When the U.S. banned the export of non-food and medical goods to Cuba back in 1960, we not only forced the little country to grow up without internet or new cars, we also inadvertently turned it into an environmental haven. But now, thanks to our sudden bout of generosity, we’re gearing up to turn that boring old haven into the resort towns and cruise ship destinations that we love so much. Here’s more from the New York Times:
Already, American corporations are poised to rush into a country only 90 miles from Florida’s shores.
[…] Cruise ship companies and hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton have indicated their enthusiasm. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” Frank Del Rio, chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said in an interview. “Cuba and the cruise industry are just a match made in heaven, waiting to happen.”
But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who went to Cuba with a congressional delegation in 2013, told the Times that he doesn’t think ruining Cuba will be that easy: “I don’t think they’re so lustful of development that they will just roll over and completely prostitute themselves to whomever comes by with a checkbook.”
That would be good, because U.S. corporations certainly won’t think twice about what they’re ruining with those checkbooks, even though some of it sounds pretty awesome. Here’s more from the Times:
Over the last two decades, Cuba has taken steps to preserve its natural resources and promote sustainable development. Environmental problems remain, including overfishing and the erosion and deforestation left from earlier eras. But the ministry overseeing environmental issues has a strong voice. And since 1992, when Fidel Castro denounced “the ecological destruction threatening the planet,” in a speech to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, a series of tough environmental laws has been passed, including regulations governing the management of the coastal zone. The government has designated 104 marine protected areas, though some still exist only on paper, with no administration or enforcement, and it has set a goal of conserving 25 percent of the country’s coastal waters.
[…]
The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 and the continued isolation by the United States forced the country to fend for itself. With the tools of big agriculture — fuel for heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides — out of reach, farming moved away from the increased sugar production that characterized the Soviet era, turning more to organic techniques and cooperatives of small farmers. Oxen replaced tractors, and even today a farmer walking behind his plow is a common sight in the countryside.
Hmm … on second thought, Cuba, you’re kinda making us look bad. Cover it all with water slides and Walmarts!
Source:
Cuba’s Environmental Concerns Grow With Prospect of U.S. Presence
, The New York Times.
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Pope Francis: Humans Are Turning the Earth Into an “Immense Pile of Filth”
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