I agree about the furniture, electronics and housing part. But food gets spoiled rather rapidly unfortunately. Any effort to give food away to those in need would have to move the goods quick enough.
Stuff was tried and is being tried. For example, in my country, local supermarkets are giving away food that’s close to due date at a discount (mostly it’s 50%). It’s an easy way of buying food for cheap.
Bro trust me we have the means to feed and shelter every human on earth. Now ask yourself why don’t we?
Logistically it’s a nightmare, but local food offerings in supermarkets and farmers markets are useful in reducing resources usage.
Logistically it’s not a nightmare. We already do it, we get crops grown in country A, shipped to country B to be processed before shipping them off to country C to sell. We could easily work out to send less to C and more to D, if we wanted to.
It’s a capitalist choice to not supply everyone.
Logistically, ie making sure the food is still fresh or good Legally (as in the US it’s illegal to give food to the homeless in some places) There are some CSR initiatives from supermarkets like Lidl but in a capitalist society it’s just not profitable for the supply chain. Maybe a nightmare is too dramatic, but highly improbable in current society as it stands.
Logistically a nightmare like having a “last chance” area where homeless and poor people can just take it before it gets thrown in the dumpster? Like, literally just allowing a space?
We put more effort into denying homeless people a place to exist than it would take to enable them to exist.
I know when I say “enable” people will immediately conflate that to “encourage”, but we’ve tried for decades to be as ruthless and unkind to homeless people and the numbers haven’t exactly plummeted.
I completely agree. Things like anti homeless architecture, shelter quality and the housing voucher system (and consequent rent gauging) are obscene.
Ending homelessness would take way way less money than the current system, but the capitalist elites need a threat to barely making ends meet workers so they don’t have time or energy to worry about their neighbor.
If it is something for the homeless people inside the same city, it’s fine. However, I was thinking about the scenario where food would get transported from the richer parts of the world to the poorer parts of the world. In that case, I do not see the viability of a “last chance” - part of the food would still get spoiled and thrown away, unless you want to feed the poor some spoiled food.
I’d rather see more people educated not to buy too much food in the first place, then direct the remaining to the poor (and even, if possible, produce less in the 1st place. Have fewer cows, less agricultural land and more wild terrain (forests and the likes) if possible).
Oh, for sure transporting food across the world is a disastrously inefficient way to solve it.
I may be wrong about this, but I dont think there are many (if any) food-poor countries that are that way because of a lack of local fertile land.
I don’t think waste and excess are really the issue, but rather misallocation of resources, like you mentioned, raising cattle (or growing coffee/cocoa) over primary foods for profit over basic needs.
Something-something-communism, I suppose.
That’s true
Any effort to give food away to those in need would have to move the goods quick enough.
Having volunteered at a local food bank I can confidently say that it is absolutely possible to do. And not even that difficult, assuming there is a genuine will to do it.
Annoyingly, there are still far too many companies in the food supply chain whose mindset is that they would rather trash something than allow it to get into the hands of people who need it without them paying for it.
We have long life food, it still goes into the bin at your local supermarket.
Food insecurity is a capitalism problem. We can supply logistics to anywhere in the world if we want. We have more than enough to feed everyone. We don’t because profit is the motivation not humanity.
We don’t because it’s not free to do so. You have to pay people to produce food.
Damn can’t believe humanity starved to death before the invention of currency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
We’ve had this technology for a fucking century now, food waste could easily be drastically reduced, this shit is on purpose
The abundence argument seems written by people who do not produce anything.
I don’t think abundence arguments help the left. I raise fruit. I lose fruit to animals and weather. There is variability in the amount of fruit I produce. I often produce more than I can consume, but the logistics of getting the fruit to someone else doesn’t work out and the fruit rots. Some years I lose my fruit blossoms to frost.
I have family that work potatoes for a commercial operation. There were a bunch of potatoes that were too big to sell commercially. The operation left the potatoes to rot in the field. My relative bagged potatoes and brought them to family in the old gift economy fashion.
What is the abundence economy argument really about? Are you going to buy bird pecked fruit or C’thulu looking potatoes? Country folk trim off the bad spots. City folk often haven’t gotten their hands dirty.
I’m all for anarchy and communism. That means doing some real work and not just reaping the surpluses of capitalism. Chop some wood, it’ll do you good and be a good neighbor.
Abundance is just centrist rebranding of trickledown.
I have read some more comments. Looks like food pantries are mentioned which is further down the supply chain. Yes, canning and nitrogen warehouses exists. That is more infrastructure. I would assume all land and infrastructure is ideally community owned and operated.
Yeah, you want waste in the food system.
If you don’t have waste in a good year, you’ll have famine in a bad year.
The storage unit business is still booming, growing at over 7% annually in NA.
We have so much shit we have to rent units offsite to store our shit.and there are legit hoarders, i know someone that is.
And that’s happening at the same time that the square footage per capita has increased dramatically. Not only are houses bigger now, but household size (number of people living in each house) has shrunk too. That’s how much shit we got.
Is this happening in rural areas? I feel like in cities and suburbs there are more people living in a household. Like roommates or multiple families, because of how expensive housing is.
I call it The Treadmill. If you’re white, able-bodied, educated, motivated to play the game, etc. you can keep from falling off with what feels more or less like an easy walk. Until they speed it up. Or you get sick. Or stop playing the game.
but where’s the profit in that?! /s
I dont really understand im sorry.
Yes, wealth is distributed unfairly.
However, the value of spoiled food and the existence of discarded furniture isn’t really evidence of anything? Practically by definition, no one wants that stuff, even hungry and / or homeless people.
Some of the large grocery store spoilage is because it is not sold quick enough. This week I grabbed a had of lettuce for sandwiches, $6, so I put it back. Same every week the prices are over inflated but wages aren’t. This stuff gets tossed eventually. Have reasonable prices or controlled prices would ensure more good produce kis eaten and not discarded. Canada wastes ~ 45% of food.
People toss perfectly good furniture and electronics out because they don’t want the inconvienence of listing for free on market place or Craigslist
There was a large item waste pickup at out apartment recently, somebody put out a perfectly good desk and drawers. Looked new but had a small scratch on one panel edge ( easy to paint over or touch up )
Also thrift stores exist which are discarded belongings. I pickup what I can at thift stores in the way of electronics and reflash firmware or reformat etc, and put it out on the market. Trouble is majority of thift stores don’t accept electronics because they don’t know the working condition, so those items go to the dump.
My local Goodwill thrift has a deal with Dell, where the stores get paid a flat fee to just recycle every computer, instead of hiring or training someone to check if they’re working for resale. And Dell gets to reduce the size of the local used computer market.
Ugh
The food could have been given to someone hungry before it spoiled in the fridge.
The furniture could have been given to someone else instead of tossing it for the newer model/different decor.
My in-laws throw half-eaten food away every day. They redecorate for every season and usually only keep entire couches for 2-3 years. I’m assuming they’re an extreme outlier, but I know plenty of people who toss food like it’s fashionable to waste half your fridge every week, and get new furniture when I see nothing wrong with the old furniture.
Too few are the type to get a new chair only when the old one has broken in half, and eat everything they made for lunch.
Many homeless do want it, it’s often illegal to dumpster dive.
But that problem could be alleviated before it happens. If you know a region wastes X food, you supply less.
We don’t fairly supply our food resources because we decided “poor” people don’t deserve access to it.
Oh man.
If only there were some way we could incentivise suppliers to supply the correct amount to different regions. Like some kind of reward or financial incentive for applying the correct amount? /s
Sadly such a system if it existed would never work. It would lead to people chasing higher imaginary numbers that can only come from taking more of other people imaginary numbers away from them.
… but in the existing system suppliers are provided with the best imaginary numbers by sending things to places people want to buy it.
we decided “poor” people don’t deserve access to it.
You either produce your own food or you pay someone else to do it. What you seem to want is outright slavery.
Lol, this your brain on capitalism.
The thing you are missing is that not all the food is spoiled. Restaurants and supermarkets do not allow employees to take home food that is going to the dumpster, even if it is still good to eat for that night. Perfectly edible food is being thrown away since giving it to employees would “cause employees to make unsellable food so they can take it home at the end of the day”. It is all greedy mental gymnastics by corporate assholes who want to line their pockets by making food a scarcity.
Discarded does NOT by definition mean nobody wants it. It means that somebody threw something away. There could be plenty of people who wanted or needed it but were prevented from obtaining it due to greed or regulation.
Those greedy corporate assholes have an incentive to maintain an efficient distribution system. They dont make money by throwing food away. Any system has some waste.
Here its not really possible to discard furniture that might be usable. When you go to the rubbish dump with a load of stuff someone inspects what youve got and directs you to sort recyclables and furniture and stuff that someone may want. Only real waste ends up in landfill.
They might make an efficient distribution system, but they do not make an equal one. They efficiently choose to send more to rich places as that returns them greater profit. The problem here is not efficiency, it’s intent.
Not necessarily. If ever producer sent their stuff to “rich places” there would be an excess in those places causing a reduced price.
I agree with you but there are logistic challenges to getting 1/3 of a banana to the person who needs it. This example may seem silly but it’s a realistic example of household food waste.
But I agree that solving hunger should be a society’s top priority which it clearly isn’t under a food for profit model
The issue I see is overpriced food leading to low amount of buyers so the food spoils. Because Loblaws doesn’t care about feeding everyone they want most profit even if it means tossing food away to maintain the pricing
It’s not 1/3 of a banana. It is a batch of bananas that are slightly brown. It is 4 unsold donuts at closing. It is unsold merchandise they throw away to make room for new product.
It has NOTHING to do with logistics. The food is already at the store. The only difference is the store manager being forced to say YES at the end of the day when a hungry employee asks to take the unsold food that would otherwise go into the dumpster home.
You’re only looking at retail and you’re discarding what I’ve said about household food waste.
Globally, the majority of food waste, around 61%, occurs in households
From Wikipedia: “Food loss and waste is food that is discarded or otherwise lost uneaten. This occurs throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world’s food is thrown away, and a similar proportion of calories is lost on top of that by feeding human-edible food to farm animals. A 2021 meta-analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that global food waste amounted to 931 million tonnes annually (about 121 kg per person) across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.”.
And
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=43836&v=0 check the summary PDF
Utilizing household food waste is a matter of getting uneaten food to people who would eat it. It’s incredibly difficult, this is the challenge that I referred to as logistics.
Thus the problems are logistics and overconsumption
The majority of the food isn’t spoiled. There’s nothing wrong with it before it goes to the landfill, it just looks funny. Same for the furniture and clothes. That was last seasons stock, and we can’t give it away, so into the dump it goes. They do the same with housing. It just takes longer. The worst thing you can do with a building is let it sit empty. They rot quicker that way.
Hyperbole.
Yes some things are wasted, that doesn’t mean they can be redistributed to solve scarcity.
It means its not economically viable to get those things to the people who need them.
Furniture can easily be restored instead of being thrown away. And parts of that furniture (if it’s damaged beyond repair) could be recycled (i.e. glass).
I have a friend who chose not to replace his 50+ year old wooden floor in his house, but rather call a restoring company. He sent me a pic with that done and it’s looking gorgeous.
Amazing. I can’t believe no one else has thought of this “restoration” life hack over the millennia /s.
They’ll have to think of some sort of ‘intentional deterioration’ or something to ensure that products break and are made hard to repair.
If only there was some way consumers could choose whether to buy something cheap and disposable or expensive and robust. Some kind of system whereby you could evaluate items and consider repairability prior to purchase.
I find it funny that you keep trying to describe the current system as a solution to the problems of the current system.
Well, isn’t it kind of obvious that the current solutions are the best solutions we have at present?
Yes, wealth is not distributed equally, as has been the case since the dawn of time.
It would be great to solve that, but in the mean time we need to settle for doing our best.
No. It’s very obvious that the current system is the cause of our problems at the moment.
We already know of many better methods, but we cannot achieve them due to the current systems monopoly on violence and its glee to use it.
Food insecurity isn’t always about lack of food, more like lack of logistics.
The weird part is that the rest of us don’t simply devour those who are perpetuating this evil on almost everyone else.
Why doesn’t Ross, the largest friend, simply devour the others!?
We should be intercepting the landfill
dumpster diving is a thing. food not bombs.
Yeah I was thinking more along the lines of repurposing, repairing, and medical piracy. Like people take batteries out of vapes to make power walls and all the aspirin can be converted into other drugs
Because the two thousand child raping and killing men who rule over us have deemed it so
Capitalism working as designed
These thimble deep hot takes are annoying.
Is there waste in the system… Yeah. It’s also worth noting there has never been a zero waste supply chain or distribution system under any economic system or government.
Centrallia PA had a lot of vacant houses for years. 500+ over about 4 decades. Nobody seemed to want them on account of the giant underground coal fire randomly collapsing the terrain and spewing toxic gasses. What a waste of good housing am I right?
Or check out some of the offerings around Amboy CA. You can get a vacant house and 5 acres in twenty nine palms for 18 grand.
https://www.trulia.com/home/78701-ramona-dr-twentynine-palms-ca-92277-299170461
These reactionary takes are annoying.
We can do better and make new systems that have less waste and benefit more people equally.
Great. So do it. Don’t talk about it be about it.
But that’s not what this meme is about. Spouting context free statistics to pretend there’s an evil conspiracy is just tin foil hat shit that serves no one.
I’d love it if I could always find someone who wants to finish the last half of my fried rice before it dries out in the fridge, but a food bank won’t take half eaten food. The distribution system exists, the soon to be wasted food has a willing donor. But there are practical limitations that generate millions of pounds of wasted food that have no basis in greed or Ill will.
This is a moral superiority circle jerk. “Look at us. We get it. Waste bad. Efficiency good. Helping others good.” Groundbreaking shit. It’s a shame no one’s thought of this before.
Which people do you want to put in what a vacant home? Who gets to decide? How do we relocate them? Do they have a say in this? What do they do once they’re there? What do we do if they won’t relocate? Show me a reasonable policy document you want passed that addresses any of this shit… I’ll personally write my congressman and senator about it. I’ll donate time and money to the cause.
It’s wild to see the assumption that just because somebody makes a meme about a topic means that they don’t actively participate in trying to better our system. Namely because so much of the waste we’re talking about isn’t your half eaten fried rice, and the example you provided about housing is but one example of vacant homes. There are so many vacant homes on the market that are perfectly suitable to live in, but we live in an economic system where housing is denied unless you can pay for it. Which means so many of us are at the whims of the real estate market and the people who profit off trying to make their property as valuable as possible. That’s the thing, it’s not necessarily about intentional ill will, but the side effects of things that seem like perfectly reasonable justifiable decisions. Throwing away food because it’s cheaper to do so, leaving suitable houses empty for decades because it’s cheaper to do so, manufacturing millions of dollars of cheap electronics that are going to go to waste because getting people to buy the new thing is profitable. I think it would be totally possible for us to build manufactured housing at scale, using our tax dollars, and when a person wants to live independently they can apply and receive a home at no cost to them. It would be totally possible for us to manufacture devices that are intended to be maintained and used long term, generating less waste. But when everything is built around making money, this all goes out the window.
It’s wild to see the assumption that just because somebody makes a meme about a topic means that they don’t actively participate in trying to better our system.
If half the people wasting time on memes dedicated that to helping others, there’d be a demonstrable difference.
This is just an excuse to be anonymously judgmental while ignoring your own lack of effort.
There are so many vacant homes on the market that are perfectly suitable to live in
Can you provide a few examples?
I think that you overestimate what even large amounts of people working together can accomplish vs the lobbying power of companies like Blackrock. Our state is corrupt and calling your representatives can only do so much. Memes are a way of sharing ideas, and in any political movement, sharing ideas is critical. You may consider it a waste of time, and assume that OP and myself do nothing but virtue signal. Ultimately those assumptions are just that, and the only anonymous judgement has been on your end. I’m not making assumptions about you, or about what you do, support, believe, etc. I pointed out your assumptions, and you’re calling that judgement. As far as vacant homes, there’s plenty of data out there if you’re willing to do a single internet search. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
It is NOT an assumption that taking literally the lowest hanging fruit achieves virtually nothing.
There is no doubt that actual participation does more than self-righteous lazy people on the internet that pretend to care so much but can’t life a finger.
Also, that link you provided only proves that you don’t know what “vacancy” means in that data. Those are not free homes homeless can live in. Just because they’re not rented or sold doesn’t mean no one owns them.
The source I provided categorizes them based on why they are vacant. Consider that people owning homes they don’t live in is part of the problem with distribution of housing. Especially when we are talking about large real estate corporations that buy up large amounts of land. I don’t care if somebody has a vacation home, I do think it’s a problem for companies like greystar to exist. The system we use to distribute housing is failing our population. Again, you’re calling us self-righteous and lazy, when you don’t know us, or anything about our lives other than that we post memes on social media. You don’t know what kind of protesting we do, or what charity groups we support financially, or the way is that we help others in our communities. Perhaps, instead of trying to shit on others sharing ideas on a social media platform designed for sharing ideas, you can just walk away from a post.
There isn’t an evil conspiracy, there is capitalism.
Yes. And socialism. And communism. And feudalism.
Instead of doing the captain obvious bit, point me towards the -ism that fixes inefficiency, food spoilage, lopsided real estate demand, while respecting basic human rights and public safety. Cuz I’m in.
Hold the memes and show me the solution.
Anarchism.
If you don’t want to learn about it from memes, go do some hard reading. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
Anarchism
“I’m twelve and this is deep” kind of take.
“I’m a dumbarse and don’t know what anarchism is” kind of take.
See how easy it would have been to start there?
There are vacant homes so if there was anarchy… People would identify and relocate to those vacant homes… By some means.
Or “if it wasn’t for this damned government, I wouldn’t be throwing away carrot skins and old leftovers, I’d be making vegetable stock and unregulated penicillin with them”.
More like if it wasn’t for this system, we wouldn’t be wasting 300,000 potatoes to make packets of chips that went into the bin when they didn’t sell compared to the more advertised brand.
More like if it wasn’t for this system, my toaster wouldn’t conveniently break 2 weeks out of warranty, and I would have a right to repair it myself.
More like if it wasn’t for this system this empty house with squatters wouldn’t be evicted and left empty again.
Isn’t anarchism just “only local government”? Not sure how that helps anything.
Anarchism is many local groups, co-operating with each other as a larger whole. It’s basically the Fediverse concept.
Read a book
So that’s a “no” on having any answers. We’re just going to do “capitalism bad. And no one starved outside of capitalism”. It’s okay.
The funny part is I’m not taking a pro capitalism stance. I’m not fighting you on this. I’ll accept your premise. Let’s hear the solution. You can solve the world’s problems no sense keeping it to yourself.
“Nobody has answers” is fucking lauguable, your voluntary ignorance is rhetorically worthless and shameful
Then where are the answers?
They’re right here, try reading some of them
Look if you got a dozen awesome solutions to food waste throw that up instead of a low effort meme. I’m very open to detailed answers.
So far I’ve got a reading list about anarchy. And another person told me consumer choice and marketing lead to waste, but was a little light on how getting rid of consumer choice and marketing would effect production and/or solve the efficiency issue. But I did ask for clarification.
I’m here. I’m trying. I want to solve these problems as bad as everybody who seems to have the answers.
Sounds like you’ve got plenty of homework already, get busy
What’s also weird is that if you want to get rid of perfectly good things nobody wants it or anyplace that might be able to use it makes it prohibitively difficult to get it to them. Got a functional fridge? Sure, you haul it out of your house, rent a truck, take it to the receiver - oh, and it can’t be more than 10 years old.
I find these posts that complain about waste kinda performative. While they’re not wrong, they ignore the logistical issues, both deliberate and indirect, of getting those things to the people that actually need them.
FWIW I’ve found that putting a “curb alert” for free good items with pictures and a location works pretty well. Some industrious person will usually pick something decent up 75% of the time.
All that old growth wood furniture… It always makes me so sad knowing that it’s essentially a semi non-renewable resource
But it can be restored, reused, repurposed or made into something entirely different. Start woodworking and make the world a little bit better.
It’s fueled by greed and the desire to control others.
