California VIII - Food Wasting

Today I would like to give a short thought to this general IN-trend of saving, saving energy, saving sources, saving our planet. Everybody today who doesn't want to be considered a moron and a reactionary declares how she/he back-ups recycling and saving the environment and as I have Americans right now all around myself I have to be prepared to listen to a half hour speech (they call it dialog) about how they, meaning their family, live modestly and effectively and save every resource that enters there household. Water, gas, paper, tin cans, energies etc.

But then, I went to a Valentine's party at David's local pre-school. The kids were treated with ice cream with all sorts of toppings, as chocolate spread, sugar sprinkles, whipped cream, caramel sauce and cut fresh fruit. They were offered by helping parents all these goodies and they were given what they asked for. But after a while when they started to be distracted by other kids playing around or just to be filled up, they started to throw their left-overs away in a huge nearby standing garbage bin. Full plates of a very good (most likely organic) ice cream were disposed into a big black rubbish bag. No one was surprised neither trying to stop them, not even me, I just made sure that David finished his portion of his treat. They practice it at school in a similar way everyday at snack time, kids help themselves with cereals, milk, cheese, crackers, fruit or whatever they have and when they feel they want to stop they take the paper plates with rest of the food to the bin. So you can see a boy carrying a bowl filled to the rim with milk and cheerios, splattering the stuff all over the floor, heading to the bin.

I am sure that without this basic private forehanded custom these kids won't be able to save more important resources in future and act considerately to the environment. And it throws a significant shadow for me on their parents' proclamations about their responsible recycling family policy. I've just read that Americans (each and everyone) in average throw away 0.5kg of food a day which sounds surreal to me. And that more arrogant around the world are only British (hence the flourishing foxes in cities) and Japanese. On the other end of the scale, the most progressive within the Euro-American civilization are Swedish who are far far ahead in trying to handle there energy consumption vs. environment conflict in a reasonable and honorable manner. Not that I am an environmentalist fanatic or an alternative no carbon person, I just try to be as effective and moderate as possible and do have, probably because of my Central European past, my limits still little lower and, in the end it saves our family money a bit, too.