Waste in society

The realization that it’s irrational to be concerned with one aspect of social problems without being concerned with the others struck me today. And although many of us are concerned with multiple facets, some find it convenient to be an environmentalist for example, but not a workers’ rights advocate.

Take the case of food discarded by a grocer. The grocer receives a case of individual jars of pasta sauce, but one jar breaks while sitting in the store room. Instead of cleaning up the remaining jars and stocking the product, many retailers just throw the whole mess out.

It has to do with the opportunity cost of cleaning the remaining jars up. If the cost of paying a worker to wash the jars is greater than simply ordering a new case of sauce, it’s unlikely anyone will be paid to do it.

This is simple enough and not suprising, still, what led me to this is what happens next. Most commonly, the other 11 or 17 jars will be discarded in the box, without so much as opening the box to look. The point is that perfectly good food is being discarded.

First someone had to grow the tomatoes and other produce using fertilizer, water, seed, pesticide, farm workers’ labor and farm subsidies as inputs. As a side note, most fertilizer in use in the united states today is derived from petroleum rather than manure. The produce is then transported to a canning facility using labor, diesel fuel, and wear and tear on a truck. Canning requires new inputs like crates and glass jars, which also had to be manufactured. More labor is employed and electricity derived mostly from coal is consumed to cook the sauce, sterilize the jars and run the machinery After being canned, the jars are boxed in cardboard made from tree pulp, wrapped in petroleum based plastic on wooden pallets and loaded by a fork lift operator onto a truck.

I could continue, but I think I make the point that natural recourses (water, coal, oil, wood), time, human labor and of course food (something millions are dying from lack of right now) are all utilized so some profit-maximizing retailer can just throw it all in a garbage can.

Having worked for grocery chain several years ago, I know how it goes. if a 24 pack of soda has a damaged can, if a 60 lb bag of dog food gets a small tear, if a piece of produce falls on the floor, it’s store policy to trash it all.

What is wrong with society when all the resources we work to extract from the world just end up buried in a landfill without having been consumed?