Anyone interested in this conversation? It is certainly one of the biggest elephants in the room when it comes to our species’ current civilizations.
it seems with our constant improved education, certain issues are still spiralling out of control. As a simple and small example that wastes thousands of tonnes of food per year just in Taiwan is the convenience store model. Processing: 20220211_181617.jpg…
Here is a pic from today from the nearest family mart in atown semi close to me. very low population but on a national roadway that sees toursists. I see 2 to 5 baskets of food thrown away everyday. They even adveritise with printed and coordinated signage that after 5 pm can come get 30% off (or as the taiwan system, you only pay 70%). Today over half the refrigerated foods were stickered. And in an hour most will be thrown out. I know the franchise owners and the say it goes to ferilizer companies…which opens up a whole other can of worms.
Now it may seem nice to discount. Feed the homeless perhaps? but on scale that not just is lunacy based on ee insane levels of animal cruelty. But the logistics of feeding animals farming crops, shipping, packaging and all the logisics in plasics and Refrigeration etc etc its a pretty embarrasingly obvious problem that so far seems everyone avoids on the production side, and on the consumer side every just blames the companies…ironic. its not just about animal torture that just gets put in the garbage. Or pollution. Or wasted food. or inefficiency. Or wated money. or the entire worlds health risks with such pollution, contaminaion and so on. Its all of that put together. As a single issue ts far worse than vehicles, corruption wars and allthat put together really. Just based on the scale of it.
I am quite curious how this astonishingly unimaginable level of stupidty actually can maintain its presence in aworld that deems itself intellectually bright. What are the answers a its so overtly obvious why the whole system is quite damaging to ourselves and surrounding environments. Yet we still say fuck it. What gives? I dont like the excuse we are simply not intelligent, because people keep claiming we are ultra intelligent whilst shitting on how lowly and dumb other species are thta eat and breed into collapse. How are we more intellgent and how do we stop this enormous snowball effect?
Note for mods. Please dont change the title. It was chosen quite specifically. Referrences below to support it.
711 does as well. But that doesnt solve the problem of intentional overstocking for nothing other than looking full. Its really shocking the volume that gets dumped…
Its a company policy. It makes sense in places with incredibly high population density and relatively small store sizes they will likely sell out faster. But many stores are not such a high pop/high rent/small shop type scenario.
One of the issues is that customers actively avoid stores where they have experienced shortages of a certain product which the competition did not experience. Thus, it’s often more viable economically to overstock and throw away excess stock at the end of every day rather than understocking and risking to lose customers to the competition.
I mean in theory, many people seem to agree that overstocking is bad and should be avoided. But at the same time, people complain if stores don’t overstock and some products are actually sold out when they arrive at the store…
Any thoughts on solutions? Maybe we can brainstorm some stuff and people can implement things step by step in their lives.
I dont think feeding the homeless is a viable option here the ratios dont add up.
I think if people spent aday in a pig farm here the might quickly change their syance on ordering more and dumpin it when full.
Not just convenience tries. Right from the farm lots of stuff trucked to soring faciliies are dumped due to simply size. Wont fit right in processing machinery. A fairly sickening quantity of food (and by proxy, air, water and soil contamination/pollution) is dumped for no better reason it clogs factory machines.
I wonder what a meal box model would do in Taiwan. I think too many people eat out for it to work, but I feel like HelloFresh, Blue Apron, etc. companies actually do a great job of cutting down food waste— you need to order for the week ahead a week ahead of time and it’s kind of way too pricy to over order. But you get exactly the amount you need to make each serving. Since you order a week ahead, the distributors don’t need to play guessing games like grocery and convenience stores. And the plastic waste isn’t something that can reasonably be brought up, considering how everything is sold in individual packages here anyway.
Mealboxes became a (supplier side) fad a couple years back. Then corona hit and it seemed to morph that progression more into refrigerated/frozen meals that can be heated up at home. I think the food box style will come back, the issues are logistics farm side coupled with the local culture of customer entitlement. both very very difficult hurdles at times. Its a pretty hard one to do sometimes. Which is interesting because the cultre is already well accostomed to eating whatever is viven to them. Eg. Lunch boxes come delivered and many dont know what veggies they get. One of the reasons i love taiwan is they are less picky in some ways. also leads to food waste though. We used to supply a couple wholesalers that sell to such places that do delivered (raw) food boxes. But when everyone and their dog started the pre made meal sales online during the covid panic, they died off.
Years ago I had contacts with a company in Belgium that made ‘ready-to-eat-meals’ that were packed under atmosphere and tunnel-microwave sterilized, they had a 9 month shelve life and tasted pretty good. Most parts of the meal were separated in their own compartment.
Interested to learn more. Can only say, taiwan aint no Belgium it seems. Here, people just make shit in their kitchen and sell online. Often quite tasty. But sanitation is ,well, ya…Which i respect. In this regard i think that taiwan has it more right than many ultra strict countries. There are laws to control peoples options in the name of food safety. Taiwans main issue is we are a society of lies. To the core. This reflects in the labels and marketing quite a lot. But they (government) dont go after hand made style mom and pop tpes, and generally dont bring down the hammer until there is a problem. Aka. Buyer beware. Aka, buyer responsibility. I like that. Of course large corporations like say Carrefour, 711, costco mcdonalds etc are held to a higher standard to bring down the hammer on their suppliers which are now heavily regulated unless they are big. Sanitary standards i mean. Other standards are internationally agreed upon dont matter: environment, health, morals etc.
If its raw veg, fruit etc sitting isnt an issue. If NZ meant actually prepared meals (pre made meals) or meat rather than raw ingredient styled box deliveries, cooling is needed. Sucks to live in a condo then i suppose? Or maybe if the strata used your monthly money and spent it on common sense things like fridges given the past 2 years…?
The meal boxes I was thinking of send you all the components for specific recipes (and the recipe itself either on a printed card or avail online) and then you make them yourself. So it’s a bag of veggies, pre-measured rice/pasta/couscous/quinoa/other grain, meat, eggs, pre-measured sauce stuff, etc. all in a box that you then wash, chop, sautee, etc to make a meal.
While I scoffed at the idea when I first heard of them (most of the services have their recipes online for free, just go to the store and buy the stuff yourself!), they’re actually quite sensible. You can try out lots of recipes that you might not otherwise have ever tried and you don’t end up with a bunch of random food that you don’t necessarily know what to do with after making the one recipe (aka food waste). You also don’t come home on a busy night and wonder what you’re going to do for sustenance when it’s already been chosen for you and the ingredients are sitting in a box with directions on how to prepare them. (I can’t be the only person who spends half an hour scrolling through foodpanda before deciding to just throw a protein and some veggies in a skillet and call it dinner). Problem of course is that few Taiwanese make their own meals unless grandma/mom is expecting them to be home for dinner (in which case it’s the older people making the meals and the adult children begrudgingly consuming them). But the boxes in the US are shipped in insulated boxes and packed with ice, so I think they’re guaranteed to stay cold up to 24 hours from delivery time. I know people in Arizona (50 degrees Celsius days not unheard of) that have them delivered in mid-day and the food is perfectly cold (and fresh) when they get home at night. TW has less distance to cover and excellent logistics, so I’m sure someone could make it work in a way the US and Europe never could. Problem would be the lack of kitchens and motivation to cook (or is it the other way around?)
Yes, those are certainly convenient! Sorry, i misunderstood what you meant before. I was thinking more like thee farm coops that send a box of veg for an annual/monthly fee. Bcommon where i was vorn in canada and growing in acceptance here in taiwan. Fruit boxes are easier to be fair, in taiwan. But thats much different than what you described. And although the system you mention is nice a per people cooking their own food, it doesnt really reduce waste outside the reason that people can order and use what they get (pre proportioned meals tocook at home). But those foam boxes, ice packs etc kind of defeat the purpose, if i am being honest. It creates massive waste in packaging, storing and also creates exponential waste via delivery logistics efficiencies.
I think that system is a good baby step to get adults to start thinking about being responsible, but its a far leap to actually being meaningful in regards to waste management. Perhaps its like kindergarten, lays a foundation for those that are seeking to learn more
Yeah the packaging waste for those is INSANE but the food waste reduction comes from not needing to buy large quantities of something that you only need a little of (and would thus maybe/likely throw away). This is less of an issue in TW, as everything comes in smaller packages (which also leads to more packaging waste). Ya can’t win! As a single person or a small family, I think those boxes really do cut down on food waste. The question is how/is there motivation by those companies to have a system in place to reuse the packaging? Also, as I said above, you have to order a week in advance. That means stores don’t need to stock shelves for the sake of looking full, since the consumer won’t see the warehouse shelves. The distributors don’t necessarily need to even pick produce in excess, depending on where that’s coming from
(I worked on a food co-op in college. Lots of fun. Learned a lot about how to make things with veggies I’d never have tried before. Those do exist to an extent here, but there are also traditional markets everywhere where you can actually pick the food you want, while co-op boxes tend you give you a box of “random veggies”)
