Australian group Do Something received lots of media attention by drawing attention to Christmas food waste. Both television and print media ran stories about how food waste during the holidays harms the environment.
Not surprisingly, the reaction hasn’t been that positive. As you can see here, commenters are frustrated that enviornmentalists are trying to tell them how to celebrate their Christmas. And that’s one of the nicer comments.
I can see both sides here. Christmas, and, ahem, Thanksgiving, are times when the media is prone to pay more attention to the issue of food waste and hunger. If you want to get the message out, it’s a good time to do so.
Then again, it’s kind of a bah-humbug approach to single out the environmental effect of Christmas food waste. And while guilt is an effective motivator, it’s not a great way to go.
My take is that you should use the attention of a holiday to prompt folks to make changes for the rest of the year, which will have such a larger impact and won’t piss people off.
Does that piss you off? What’s your take on the topic?
8 Comments
Hi Jon. Thanks for posting your thoughts on the issue. While the holidays are a time of undue excess (both in eating and shopping) it is also a time of often unexpected generosity. Highlighting the positive things people do around the holidays and suggesting more ways for people to manage their consumption, reflect on the past year, and plan for the future is the real challenge. I think you’re right that people don’t want to be dictated to from anyone. Making more objective and positive suggestions may be better received. Hope you are both well!!
It doesn’t piss me off, no. Mainly because I don’t care about Christmas.
I am, however, tired of the continuous barrage of pious lecturing from “environmentalists.” I put environmentalists in quotes because it seems like many, many, many vocal “environmentalists” are only earth-conscious about the things that’re convenient to them – chemical-dying hair, buying tiny plastic bottles of designer, “eco-friendly” shampoo, etc (I’m going to stop here, before I climb higher on my soapbox and fill this comment box with 20 billion examples of the frequent hypocrisy)? That’s all okay.
I agree that food waste is a serious problem – why not simply give the people great ideas on how to use up those leftovers? Or the proper procedures for donating them to those less fortunate? That way people don’t feel like their being nagged to celebrate someone else’s way – they’re just given ideas on how to do it their way AND cut down the waste.
Hey Jeanne, good to hear from you. Highlighting the positive is neat in that it provides an example and (hopefully) inspiration for others. I hope your holiday season is indeed filled with unexpected generosity.
Allie, I agree–usable info, rather than pious lecturing. *But*–there’s a fine line between raising awareness and lecturing.
So true. That requires a level of tact I simply don’t possess. Maybe the “people in the know” should start hiring people who’re good with… well, people?
Bah, humbug, indeed!
There’s no food waste in our holiday household–my grandmother’s traditional greeting includes the phrase “What can I get you?”, and it’s a rare guest who leaves without at least a small something wrapped for later–but even if we were the sort who needed reminding, this message, in this slant, would only raise our hackles.
On the other hand, it is the gift-giving season. A pleasant little gift-guide wouldn’t have been at all amiss. Green Bags, assorted tupperware, bokashi buckets (couldn’t resist!-g-), those digital daycounter things that fasten to open jars and so on…
Ah, well. No one said environmentalists had to be media-savvy. Good thing some bloggers are!
Happy holidays,
DSF
http://bokashislope.blogspot.com
no bins, just buckets
Not sure about ‘tact’ or the right way to frame such a message. There seem to be people who will go into rant-mode about those spoilsport tree-huggers at the slightest provocation purely reflexively, out of some sort of deep-seated hate or resentment against environmentalists. (One could speculate here whether that’s actually based on guilt…)
Looking at some of the links, I have a slight suspicion (i.e. it seems obvious) that the mainstream news media are going to deliberately report on the issue in a way that raises controversy – i.e. no matter how well you, as the activist, phrase the issue, they’ll probably try to quote-mine your statement to make you sound like a scrooge, an elitist tree-hugger who doesn’t understand the concerns of normal people. Look at the ABC article you linked to – Jon Dee’s actual message includes the perfectly positive part about freezing leftovers, but they emphasize the “global warming”, “so many tons of waste” parts far more. And with the pseudo-controversy around global warming, that’s going to be another red rag to send anti-environmentalists into a frothing rage.
So I think you’re going to get that sort of reaction, on some level, no matter how tactfully and positively you raise the issue of food waste (or any other).
Jon,
Fist off, good topic of discussion. The idea of tactfully discussing the issue of food waste in America is like tactfully addressing the issue of alcohol and other drug abuse in America–no matter how skillful you are in addressing the issues, the simple fact that you seek to address the issue (or that you think to say, “hey, I think this might be an issue”) calls the lifestyles of so many people into question. It seems that dealing with rotten responses and having your own words discolored is part of playing around in this territory. I think that having a solution-oriented mindset and sticking to that path is a good idea.
Just like you mentioned in your Portland, Oregon video interview (posted a week or so ago on this blog) that the issue of food waste crosses over so many issues–environmentalism, politics, economics, health–when you begin to demand a more serious dialogue on this issue, it creates a situation wherein other people begin to think more critically about those other issues as well. I was speaking with my friend–who is attending graduate school at Emory in Global Health–right before Christmas about the cost of dealing with global hunger. Monetarily, the issue is a tens-of-billions-of-dollars problem, but in order to begin addressing world hunger, there is an ideological cost in acknowledging the effective methods for dealing with hunger and for eradicating it from Earth. At first, we would likely just throw money at the issue. Over time however, we would want to get the most from our money and start to figure out how best to deal with the issue, thereby bringing to light massive systemic issues which are unavoidably embedded within.
The issue of food waste is similar in the sense that when we truly look at the issue and its underlying causes, we compromise the foundation of our leisure class society as we know it. So, while the monetary costs of addressing food waste are not only less than for addressing hunger–they are actually money-savers–the damage to the American Ideal cannot be measured. If we no longer have the freedom to labor for whatever pleases us, and enjoy the fruits of that labor in whichever way we please, then what do we have? This is the question that–either consciously or subconsciously–lingers for many who rile out against the fascism of food phreaks.
For my part, I intend to continue doing the work that I do, and I eagerly anticipate the arrival of your book. On a side-note (and sort-of as a response to an earlier poster), those people who are “in the know” on these issues are usually the people who are working the hardest to keep food out of dumpsters, and can easily be the least likely people to innovate in the field of food waste public relations. Because this issue has so much to do with human behavior and social conditioning, anything you can do to educate yourself and the people around you is going to be of great assistance, if not for the general cause of avoiding food waste, then for yourself and your community.
Peace and Love,
Dan
***An Additional Note from the Hunger Outreach Perspective***
Each year, the response in our community relating to hunger is huge. The holidays are a busy time–food drives and donations come pouring into the warehouse as we rush to count what’s coming in, sort it and send it out to the pantries and meal programs. Once the Holiday Season comes to an end and many of us bundle up for the winter, the need in the community still lingers, while the compunction to donate in the community drops off sharply.
Each year, around the same time–February or March–the director of our outreach organization appears on local television in the warehouse surrounded by empty shelves. The imagery of this is enough to instill guilt in those at home watching television to where they exclaim, “Oh no, CHOW is out of food. They need our help!” (the collective memory being so poor as to forget that in fact, this is a yearly occurrence, just as the glut of donations around Thanksgiving and Christmas are a yearly occurrence).
Ironically, the donations in the front of the warehouse–our food recovery operations–come in fairly consistently throughout the year, because let’s be honest, while our consciousness of the plight of hungry (food insecure) folks around our community is episodic, our consciousness of our own hunger is very regular (and if we have bad habits around food waste, then those are very regular as well).
For my part, I am a Freegan, and I bring light to the issue of food waste at every meal, when I stop my friends and family from throwing their food in the trash so that I can eat it, or put it in a pyrex. As it turns out, they have begun to waste less food over the course of our relationship (if only while in my presence) and I have managed to cut my food expenditures significantly.