The war on food waste is a waste of time
> Much like paper straws or canvas totes, though, well-meaning small changes miss the forest of structural change for the trees of lifestyle tweakingThis is my big takeaway from this article.It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the interests of sustainability, and how astoundingly futile or even counter productive it is.
At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual change.At its base level things like urban design, our reliance on cars, subsidies on crop mono-cultures and the lack of proper introspection as a people hurt us far more than any of these specific problems.Maybe we should start at the most basic question. Is food-waste even a bad thing to begin with. Food waste has been proven to not be the cause of malnutrition issues plaguing some parts the US or the world. If it is because of depleting water resources or land fertility, then crop-monocultures and mono culture subsidies are more at fault. Being sustainable is clearly more expensive, so it is certainly not a cost issue.Across social, policy and organizational issues in the world, activists routinely assume a vague sense of what is "good" and then champion it, without actually looking into why something is good or what the word means in that context to begin with.I know that not everyone is as utilitarian about how they go about things, but I often wonder if a concept even holds ground if it cannot be rephrased in a manner that makes sense in a utilitarian setting.