Thanksgiving & Waste

On Thanksgiving and every other day of the year, we Americans have so much to be thankful for.....maybe too much.  The waste of food that I see daily never ceases to amaze and disgust me.

 At a large gathering the other day, a couple was lamenting that their son wasn’t good about eating his meals.  He left his entire plate of healthy food to be thrown away while sucking on a sugar-laden lollipop.  There was no thought of taking it home—just throw it in the trash.  And, as a server/trash picker-upper, I saw others leaving huge amounts of food to stuff our overflowing landfills.

According to several credible sources, including the LA Times, 51,650,000 turkeys are devoured on Thanksgiving Day, $2.98 billion is spent on Thanksgiving dinner food in the U.S., $165 billion worth of uneaten food was thrown out in the U.S. in 2016 and 13.1 million children in the U.S. live in food-deprived households.  What kind of example are we setting for the rest of the world?

At my house, nothing goes to waste – stone soup for leftovers; compost for food/leaves/grass; recycling of metal, plastics and paper; thrift shop donations for usable items.  It’s not that hard; anyone can do it.  How about you?