Saturday, November 30, 2019

Produce Waste

The PBS Newshour is showing a piece on food waste, featuring an effort in California. It is part of a weeklong effort.  This particular one is laudable, featuring coordinators and software packages. 

But my contrarian side is present whenever I hear an estimate of "pounds of food wasted".  Looking at the produce shown, the pounds wasted include peach pits, watermelon rinds, etc.  I know measuring the "waste" is hard, and maybe there is a benefit to using fuzzy statistics: they stir up activism.  My instinct, however, is that better stats, more solid stats, are the way you build the base for a social movement, for changing norms. 

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