Food Waste Friday

In honor of Kristen, I'm going to do my best to participate in "Food Waste Friday" but will make no promises that it will get done on Fridays. I normally clean out the fridge on Sundays when I get home from the store and am trying desperately to fit everything into the fridge and the produce bowl on the counter.

In the past few days we have thrown out:
1. 3# bag of size A red potatoes
2. 1/2 of a 5# bag of new potatoes
3. 4# of clementines
4. 1/4 loaf of bread
5. A package of Thyme
6. 3 Roma tomatoes
7. Some leftovers from eating out last week.

When I say "throw out" I mean compost. We bought a composter 2 weeks ago. Last night we officially dumped stuff into it. While we were waiting to get it we had a tub in the garage that was our holding area. I'm excited about the composter but I think that we will need at least one or two more. We have the composter sitting right next to the vegetable garden so that we won't have to go very far when we do get around to having usable compost.

Gail blogged this morning about impressing people and although my post has nothing to do with that there was 1 part of her blog that did have something to do with one thing that really bothers me: "While North America has 8% of the world’s population, we manage to consume 33% of the world’s resources, and we produce 50% of the world’s non-organic garbage."

In the U.S. few people recycle, at least from what I can tell. Why don't more people recycle? Are we just too lazy? Do we not care? Is it a lack of knowledge of how garbage affects the world?

Here are a few facts:


Statistically the United States recycles just about 28% of its waste today, which is doubled from what it was a decade ago.

In Europe, Austria heads the EU in its recycling efforts with approximately 60% of its waste being recycled.

Greece falls short with only 10% of its waste being recycled and the remaining 90% going to the landfills.

Unfortunately many countries in the European Union as well as the United States efforts in recycling are more similar to Greece than they are to Austria.

The UK is estimated to recycle about 17.7%, and Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Luxembourg being not too far behind.

Even the most conscious minded person who fills their recycle bins each week may not realize the amount of recyclable material that is commonly thrown away in small ways.
Courtesy of Environment-Green.com

Do you compost or recycle? If so, why?