WORD OUT! The Blog to Build a New Society

Tomorrow I'll have a brand new book announcement, but for today I wanted to share a couple of links that I came across this weekend that relate to the amount of food wasted in an average household. These links relate to British statistics, but I imagine that the same holds true for the average North American family.

In the first story, studies show that Britons are wasting £10 billion worth of food a year. According to the article in the Guardian, British consumers throw away up to a third of the food they buy, and £6 billion of the wasted annual food budget is food that is bought but never touched - including 13 million unopened yogurt containers, 5,500 chickens and 440,000 ready-made meals dumped in home rubbish bins each day. To call this appalling is an understatement.

To accompany this story The Daily Mail offered a graphic illustration - one of their authors kept a daily diary documenting every single piece of food waste in her four person household. While this is doubtless an extreme example, the point is very clear. There is no place for this type of consumer behaviour in a world where food insecurity is rampant and many go hungry. To say nothing of the packaging. And how much of this food enters landfills instead of being composted?

With a little planning it seems clear that most of us could dramatically reduce or eliminate our food waste. I know I have.

When are we going to take responsibility for this most basic of our actions? Probably around the same time we finally hang up the keys to our gas guzzling cars and SUVs because we simply can't afford to drive them any more. Wouldn't it be smarter if we changed our behaviour now, instead of waiting until it's too late?

One of my favourite eco-artists, Franke James, has a new visual essay up on her blog about how to be green and glamorous. Like all of Franke's other work, this essay takes a fun approach to a serious problem - in this case the ridiculous over-proliferation of consumer goods (such as clothes) in North America.

I know that it's been years since I purchased clothes that were new instead of "new to me". (Except for rain gear - as a year round cyclist I make an exception for that.) Here on Gabriola we have a fabulous organization called GIRO (Gabriola Island Recycling Organization) that accepts donations of used clothing and household goods and then resells them at fantastically reasonable prices - kind of like an ongoing garage sale. Over the years GIRO has probably kept literally thousands of items out of landfills, and helped people save enormous amounts of money at the same time. Going to GIRO on Wednesdays and Saturdays is an island ritual (and a social event too).

What steps have you taken to counteract the waste inherent in our "throwaway" society? Tell us about it in the comments below!

In The Long Emergency, James Kunstler questions whether we as a society still possess the vernacular knowledge to survive in a world beyond cheap oil. In Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy, Lyle Estill responds with a resounding "Yes!". Using the community of Chatham County, North Carolina as an example, Estill examines the roles of agriculture, housing, fuel, education, self-government and even healing and entertainment in a sustainable local economy. Just off press, Small is Possible is gentle, inspiring, compelling, and filled with practical solutions for an uncertain future.

Is your community trying to become more sustainable? We'd love to hear what you're doing. Tell us about it in the comments below!

I always have great plans to use this blog to let people know about any upcoming chances that they may have to connect with us in person. And then of course dates sneak up on me, I overestimate the amount of things that I'll be able to get done and underestimate the amount of time that will be available to do them in, and you know the rest of that story...

So, in advance, here are the conferences that New Society will attend in May and June. We'd love to see you!

Chicago Green Festival May 17 & 18, 2008 at the Navy Pier in Chicago

The International Conference on Peak Oil and Climate Change: Paths to Sustainability May 30 - June 1, 2008 at the Calvin College Fine Arts Center in Grand Rapids, MI

Midwest Renewable Energy Association Energy Fair June 20-22, 2008 at MREA's headquarters - the ReNew the Earth Institute in Custer, WI

See you there!

Dmitry Orlov's eagerly anticipated Reinventing Collapse: Soviet Example and American Prospects is now available! This book has been generating tremendous interest in the blogosphere - check out some of these reviews:

Carolyn Baker on Speaking Truth to Power

James Howard Kunstler on Clusterfuck Nation

Amanda Kovattana on The Energy Bulletin

You can also check out an excerpt on Dmitry's blog here.

This book is incredibly topical in the current US climate of food and energy shortages - don't miss it!