Monday Moaning

This is becoming more and more prevalent.

Food wastage.

Too much food is being manufactured, supermarkets and the like are over stocking and people are buying more than they need.

As a result, we have this!

Quarter of UK’s food thrown away ‘untouched’, waste figures show

Around 1m tonnes of food binned unopened at cost of £90 per household in UK, says Waste Resource Action Programme

Unopened food from a domestic household thrown away in a dustbin. Half of the ‘untouched’ food wasted is fresh vegetables and salad Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

As much as one-quarter of the food that is thrown away by households in the UK is still “untouched” in its wrapping, analysis of waste figures shows.

This habit of regularly throwing away unused food, usually because it has been allowed to go past its eat-by date, is costing £2.4bn a year nationally or £90 per household. Such unopened food amounts to 1m tonnes of the 4m tonnes of wasted food each year, according to a new report from the Waste Resource Action Programme, a government-sponsored initiative.

Adding the value of food and drink that is partly eaten before being thrown away, or cooked and then binned uneaten, the total cost of wasted food rises to about £200 a year for the average person.

Of the unopened foods that end up chucked, about half is salad and vegetables. The waste is happening at a time when poorer and vulnerable people are reporting that they are cutting down on healthy fresh fruit and vegetables because they cost too much.

Wrap recommends simple actions including checking the fridge and cupboard before going shopping to avoid duplicating items, meal-planning and making a shopping list.

Food waste also adds indirectly to the cost of waste collections and landfill, Wrap notes, and to greenhouse gas emissions. The organisation is suggesting that each of us could choose just one bad habit to change.

Source: TheGuardian

Opinion:

Manufacturers who produce too much, supermarkets who stock too much, restaurants who cook too much  and people who buy too much, then throw away unopened/untouched  food ned to be fined.

We have to stop this wastage.

Any wastage needs to be curtailed, and the only thing that seems to work is hit their profits or pockets.

Manufacturers wasting produce – $100,00 fine, doubling for each subsequent fine.

Supermarkets and restaurants – $10,000 doubling the same.

Households – $1,000 and the same doubling.

Hit the profits or pockets and waste will soon reduce. People and companies will start buying or producing only what they need.

Nature Ramble

Another different ramble today, in fact it’s not a ramble at all, so just sit back and learn something about Africa, us and famine.

A long film, 1½ hours, but sit it out.

This documentary will change many of your preconceptions about man and the world.

I found this documentary while looking for information on Okavango Delta in Botswana one of the few inland river deltas in the world.

“The 1986 African environmental documentary of filmmaker Rick Lomba, who was tragically killed while filming the rescue operation at the Luanda Zoo in 1994. The message is as relevant today as it was at the time.” – YouTube blurb

The End of Eden

.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

My monitor blew up last night.

Not quite so spectacularly.

It was really more of a fizzle.

So I am using my lappy, and don’t have access to my planned material.

I am waiting for techy-type to deliver my standby, but you know these techy-types, then you have to extrapolate that by adding in the Brazilian factor. The fact that he is only just around the corner, 150 yards, is inversely proportional and therefore exacerbates the problem.

So, I will leave you this to think about…

We all need ‘People Skills‘

 

 

Change the World Wednesday – 25th Jun

Goiaba branca

My first goiaba branca (white guava).

The tree only produced two, but it was late in its first season. I am hopeful for next summer.

White guava are less flavoured than the traditional pinky ones, and they have a short window between ripe and rotten.

Ate it for breakfast this morning.

As for my ‘normal’ guava, I am eating them daily as they ripen.

Exciting news!

My bricks

I have a new brick.

You may remember from a few CTWWs back that I have bricks in my kitchen, which is a bit like having bats in the belfry, but with more purpose.

I am going to try to remove some of the partitions and line them with cardboard to accommodate my knives better and prevent the cutting edge from grating against the harshness of the brick.

Most of you know, that one of my hidden talents is a chef. As a chef, I take good care of my knives and they are finely honed; it doesn’t take much to knock the edge off.

Further good news. I have only one incandescent light bulb left in the house. I changed the kitchen one yesterday (after four days of procrastinating in the dark) to a CFL. A story about that on my EIMDBPFPR post.

Click the banner for the full post

So, what do we have for CTWW this week?

Discovering Nature

This week, go outside and spend some time. Perhaps take a leisurely stroll down a hiking trail or sit in a park. If you have a yard, find a comfortable spot and look at the world around you. Take your time and relish the experience. The idea, here, is to discover and appreciate the natural world around us … to see what we usually miss … to marvel at earth’s inhabitants.

Apt. A comment I made on another blog during the week, that “I don’t have a smartphone, so I am always looking up and around as I walk.”

Oblivious to his surroundings

People have become so enamored with their cellphones, iPhones, Smartphones, etc that they walk around with the eyes on their little touch screens and miss the marvels that surround them.

Up, around, down; there are marvels big and small everywhere.

People have forgotten how to appreciate nature.

Not only IT appliances, but the stress of day to day living, rushing here, rushing there, panicking because the boss wants that report before lunch; directs our attention away from nature.

The praça, park outside my gate

When I walk to the gate, I stop and look at my plants, check the acerola bush for any signs of blossom, any guava ready to be picked, is there a new shoot growing in the compost, how are my chillies ripening…

You see interesting things

Outside the gate, I look around me, I look for possible plants growing on the roadside to take home, I see insects and birds, lizards sunbathing; sometimes I stop merely to marvel at things.

Other times, I just sit in the park across from my gate, Clorinha comes with me and romps in the bushes or sits beside me on the bench for a stroke.

We need to take time out, not only to see what’s around or above us, but to de-stress.

I spend a lot of my day sitting right here, where I am now; a ten minute sit in the park with a fresh coffee and cigarette, I return with a new vigor, inspiration, enthusiasm.

Nature is the great leveler; it brings us back to earth. It stops our egos in their tracks and puts things in perspective.

It reminds us of our place in the scheme…

 

Simple Green Ideas

The world is full of these…

You have a car, you have these

What can you do with them?

Try this…

A bicycle stand

Or this…

Non-slip stairs

Or you could google ‘repurpose tires’ and see the myriad of ideas. Everything from roofing materials, planters, swings, ice-buckets, garden decor… it’s all there.

Monday Moaning

The world is slowly waking up.

Realising the major causes of obesity; organisations are trying to get the governments to listen.

But the governments don’t want to listen, there’s too much lobbying and money involved.

One article I read:

Shoppers ‘misled’ over level of fat, sugar and salt in food

Call for ban on promoting foods claiming to be healthy but which actually contain high levels of sugar, fat and salt – The Guardian Recommended reading

Is on the right track.

Another:

Health group calls for ‘sugar tax’ to cut child obesity

– BBCNews More recommended reading

Is barking up the wrong tree, close to the right one, but not close enough.

The blame is put on sugar, maybe true, but the real culprit is High Fructose Corn Syrup that is replacing true sugar in the majority of sodas and prepared foods.

Generally, the public, and these do good organisations are unaware of HFCS; and the industries want to keep it that way.

Instead of a sugar tax, although it’s a good idea, they should be calling on a double or triple tax on any product that contains HFCS. Better still they should be calling for a complete ban on the poison.

HFCS is cheaper than true sugar, ergo more profits.

What is the problem?

As I see it, supported by reading many sources, sugar is 50% sucrose & 50% fructose.

HFSC is 55-60% fructose and correspondingly less sucrose.

Doesn’t sound too bad…

But this imbalance, however it appears slight is the problem. Our bodies cannot process the excess fructose, it goes straight to the liver and becomes fat.

Therefore, an increase in obesity.

Everybody is clamouring about the obesity epidemic, but nobody is putting the blame where it belongs.

Which foods contain HFCS?

These…

And these…

And these…

And nearly every other product you buy at the supermarket or fast food outlet.

First introduced into the American food industry in the 1970s, HFCSs were used in sodas from 1984.

Looking at this graph can you see the rise in childhood obesity beginning in 1980s?

And, continuing to rise rapidly since then.

It’s only in recent years with a little awareness that there has been a slight dip.

The rapid rise in obesity in the U.S. correlates to the introduction of HFCS into processed food. – Source

There’s another issue:

As Addictive As Cocaine: HFCS – America’s Most Deadly Addiction?

– From the Trenches well worth reading because it contains info about bees too.

Much has been said on both sides of the Atlantic about declining bee populations.

If you don’t have bees, you don’t have pollination; you don’t have pollination, you don’t have food.

Sugar is a problem, but nowhere near the problem of HFCSs

We have to get the governments to put the blame where it belongs; instead of saying kids need to exercise more, sure they do, BUT THAT’S NOT THE PROBLEM! That’s just passing the buck.

We have to take personal responsibility and shun these products.

We have to send a strong message, because if we don’t, we’ll have more cases

Do you want this…

…as the future for your kids?

 

 

Nature Ramble

Not doing one this week.

Instead, I’m going to send you off to look at a mystery.

Why is Britain a wildlife migration hotspot?

Can you imagine traveling to the moon and back three times? Well that is the same distance the Arctic tern covers during its lifetime. This remarkable little bird can be seen here in parts of the UK in summer during its epic migration between Greenland and Antarctica.

Of course, Arctic terns are not the only ones to visit the UK and then leave. Hundreds of millions of animals do it each year, with some traveling tens of thousands of miles to reach our shores, often risking their lives.

But what makes the UK such an attractive destination for wildlife to visit?

Source: BBCNews Check out this link

BTW, this is my 100th Nature Ramble

 

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

We often hear only part of the story. Sometimes because we want to, other times because the truth has never been told.

GM Salmon have made a big splash, But what about GM Grouper…

Never heard about it!

Why we should be worried about ‘Frankenfish’ in south-east Asia

Unlike GM salmon, hybrid grouper gets little attention but they potentially pose a greater threat to marine ecosystems

The market for grouper is huge – in Hong Kong alone, an estimated 3.6 million grouper are consumed each year. Photograph: ALEX OGLE/AFP/Getty Images

The fast-growing super salmon produced by American biotech company Aquabounty Technologies are poised to become the first genetically modified animals to hit food markets in the US, with approval from authorities widely expected later this year. But AquAdvantage® salmon has made headlines because of the potential risks to wild stocks in the Atlantic should they escape and breed.

Hybrid grouper, on the other hand, gets almost no media attention, yet they potentially pose a greater threat to marine ecosystems because they’re farmed at sea, not inland like salmon. Hybridisation through in-vitro fertilisation is big in south east Asia, where aquaculture businesses are interbreeding valuable grouper species in a bid to create a fast-growing super fish.

Live grouper and other reef predators are highly-prized food in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and other parts of south-east Asia. They crowd tanks in seafood restaurants and are ubiquitous at Chinese wedding banquets and other formal occasions, where tradition demands they are served. Grouper can sell for well over US$100 (£59) a kilo, with very large or rare specimens selling for much more.

The market is huge. In Hong Kong alone, an estimated 3.6 million grouper are consumed each year. Demand has led to rampant overfishing across South East Asia’s Coral Triangle, a million square kilometre bioregion that’s home to more marine species than anywhere else on earth. Fishermen often use cyanide to stun grouper, destroying coral reefs in the process. According to a recent University of Hong Kong study, one in ten grouper species face extinction if current trends aren’t arrested.

In theory, advanced aquaculture techniques offer a way of fulfilling demand while reducing the pressure on wild populations. In reality, aquaculture has simply added a new market, with additional sealife being taken from the ocean to feed farmed fish in Malaysia, China and Taiwan.

Grouper are nurtured first in hatcheries from cultivated eggs and then in coastal cages or factories. Hybridisation aims to achieve the holy trinity of rapid growth rates, resilience and superior taste.

“Hybridisation of grouper isn’t new,” says Dr. Geoffrey Muldoon, a fisheries economist with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). “As far back as 1996 the University of Malaysia produced a giant grouper/tiger grouper hybrid, dubbed the Sabah Grouper specifically for live reef fish food markets in Hong Kong,” he explains. The hybrid was popular with consumers and a boom followed. “Two decades on and the science of grouper hybridisation has exploded,” says Muldoon.

In the early days, scientists only experimented with cross breeding natural grouper species. But then researchers in Taiwan began breeding hybrids with naturals and then different hybrids with each other. According to Irwin Wong, a live fish trader in Sabah, at last count, there were at least 12 new hybrid grouper variants and research is continuing in what has become a race to create a super grouper. But what if they escape?

“The fact is, hybrids have already escaped,” says Wong. “If there’s a storm, fish often get free from coastal cages.”

His fear is that two hybrids will breed in the wild. “If that happened, the effects on the ecosystem could be severe.” Because captive hybrids are fed a mix of protein rich pellets and fish, they need to consume less than their wild counterparts to add weight, according to Muldoon. If they escaped and proliferated, there could be a dramatic knock on effect in terms of demand for prey species.

Grouper are hermaphrodites – or monandric protogynous hermaphrodites to give them their full title. Early in their growth cycle they are females, but in adulthood they can change into males. No one knows the precise trigger for this transformation, though size, age and environmental factors all play a part. Hybrid groupers in captivity are all female – but in the wild they could easily change sex, according to Wong. Which brings up the possibility of a sort of “X-Grouper” wreaking havoc with the food chain.

Source: The Guardian Read more

Opinion:

Once again man is meddling with nature, and we don’t have any idea what we are doing.