Once Upon a Time a Planet (II): Voracious Consumption, Unlimited Greed
(Wall Street International) Apologising again! While the previous article Once Upon a Time a Planet… may have disturbed you by presenting a sharp panoramic picture showing how dangerous human-made pollution is now, this Part II might probably molest with you another situation in which most of us are involved… hopefully inadvertently!
It is simply about the growing voracious consumption in particular in rich societies, and the never-stoppable commercial greed dominating worldwide. See what happens:
When you go to the supermarket, you will be challenged with tremendously attractive, almost irresistible “bargains” such as, “Pay 2, Take 3”! “Special Offer,” or simply “Save”!
A human, explainable human impulse to get more for less often pushes us to take advantage of such attractive deals, often without asking ourselves if we do really need all what we are about to buy.
The consequence is that we will probably end up not consuming all what such deals persuading us of buying, and thus dumping the extra quantity we took home simply because it has expired.
Meantime, consumers have been systematically, powerfully attracted by the “look” of the products we buy: beautiful, brilliant apples, perfectly shaped potatoes, amazingly round red tomatoes, and a long etcetera. Here again, we do not usually think that such “perfect” products have implied discarding a big amount of the “ugly” ones.
Lost and Wasted
The result is that is that one-third –one third! — of all food produced for human consumption is lost and or wasted. Here, the figures are self-explanatory: as much as 1.3 billion tonnes per year of food is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain, from initial agricultural production down to final household consumption, according to the United Nations.
Moreover, the UN reports that it is not just about just losing or wasting food—it also implies a waste of resources used in production such as land, water, energy and inputs, increasing the greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, up to one third of all food is spoiled or squandered before people consume it… It is excess in an age where almost a billion people go hungry, warns the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Baher Kamal‘s article was published in Wall Street International on 18 December 2017. Go to Original
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Source: https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2018/01/01/once-upon-a-time-a-planet-ii-voracious-consumption-unlimited-greed/
