Some thought-provoking wartime posters back when people were concerned with wasting food. Seems like we need another social campaign today.
Over at NRDC Switchboard, Dana Gunders writes Dear Government: Food Waste is a Matter of Urgency. Please Take It Seriously. It’s an important post about a subject that is often ignored: that well over 40% of food in North America is wasted. Worldwide, almost a third of all food is lost to poor harvesting, lousy distribution, poor storage and ridiculous portion sizes. And it isn’t just the food wasted; it’s also the water, fertilizer and fuel.
Dana notes that the government is doing close to nothing about the problem, but that it once thought it important enough to run poster campaigns. She illustrates her post with her favourite from the US Navy in World War II.
Discover more from Moss and Fog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
3 Comments
Pingback: Incredible Foodscapes by Carl Warner | Moss and Fog
wow, thanks for all of the sobering info, Dana!
It does seem obscene to waste so much food when there are still people anywhere in the world going hungry. The costs associated with it are staggering.
Thank you for posting on such an important topic. I love these old posters and find it amazing and inspiring that at one point our government put out these posters widely to encourage food waste reduction because it would help us win the war. If only food waste reduction was seen as such a priority now. The reality is that food waste comes at an incredible social, financial and environmental cost. Food waste is costing our economy $165 billion each year and 750 million alone on waste disposal costs. The average family spends $2,200 per year on food they throw away. Environmentally, each time we waste food we are wasting all the resources that went into that food – soil, water, fossil fuels for transport, packaging, labor, etc. In the U.S. we are wasting 25% of all our fresh water to produce food that is just thrown away. Meanwhile 49 million Americans are food insecure. We must get a handle on this problem and that is why I launched Food Shift. Please check us out at http://www.foodshift.net and on facebook and twitter: http://www.facebook.com/foodshift. Thanks again for the post and thanks for your support!