Winter waste
22nd December 2007
It is that time of year again when I seem to find myself at greatest odds with certain aspects of the society we have created. Rather than my repeating last year's efforts, how about a numbers game?
- 6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown away in the UK each year, at a cost of £8 billion. This is approximately one third of the food that people buy. A third! Meanwhile, 800 million people go to bed hungry each day.
- Every year, an estimated 17½ billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This is equivalent to over 290 bags for every person in the UK. Almost all of these end up in landfill.
- The UK produces 434 million tonnes of waste each year. 317 million tonnes go to landfill, even though 90% of this is recoverable for recycling, composting or energy generation.
- Each Christmas as much as 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper is thrown away in the UK. That's almost the size of Manhattan.
The list could go on, and indeed there are a vast number of shocking statistics out there. And though they can be manipulated, they cannot change the facts. Things as they are are clearly unsustainable. We have built a society that has lost all touch with the world around us.
Of course, it will change, because it must. But the question still remains: will the change be forced upon us, or will it come from within?
A very happy Christmas to you! May it be an opportunity to celebrate what we have received from Nature, and to renew our resolve to live in a manner such that our children, and theirs, will be able to rise to a bright dawn.