cant see why they banned this advert

[Easy_Rider]

The 33% is what consumers throw away, of course there is much more thrown away by supermarkets and restaurants too.
It just seems crazy why people throw away food, even if they don't care about resources, it's still money they are wasting.

 

[lewis1641]

Haha cheers marin man. I finished the post in my head but not on the keyboard!

 

[KeepItSteel]

Us throwing away 33% of our food is not the problem (especially in a UK population of 60million).
The real problem is overpopulation. And until the 'third world' countries stop popping out 5-10 kids each per generation, with their own governments incapable & usually unwilling to support them, nothing will sort the worlds resource problems out.

Recycling your potato skins will have 0.000000000 effect in the real world.

 

[marin man]

I often air this view with my friends keep it steel,but dare not type it out
Well done that man

 

[KeepItSteel]

It does appear to be a controvertial/un-PC point of view, but its glaringly obvious.
And I have no time for PC.

 

[marin man]

I could pm you my ideas for solving the third world issue if you like

 

[Easy_Rider]

Nothing un-PC about saying the world is overpopulated, prince Charles himself said the world is about 80% overpopulated, but what you say after that tells a lot I think.

The amount of food we waste was merely an example of how much we waste in general. There are many resources that we waste daily, but we can expand the food example if you like to show how it does effect people worldwide. We are importing a lot of foods from the rest of the world that take a lot of resources to produce, but specifically the scarcest in a lot of countries is water. So dwindling the water table of a poor country just so we can buy cheap food and throw a lot of it out. Interestingly the water example extends much further than just food, here are a few examples;

One serving of lettuce takes 23litres of water to produce
One serving of rice takes 36litresof water to produce
One hamburger takes 4,912litres of water to produce
A pound of Cotton takes 101gallons of water to produce
One ton of steel takes 62,000gallons of water to poduce

I'm not saying we should all be tree huggers but we really need to realise that what we consume in the western world really does take a lot of resources. There are arguments that as consumers we are providing jobs for the people producing and of course we are, and so the argument becomes quite complex and very much worth debating.

And do I believe the world is overpopulated, no because I believe that would mean I place more importance on my life than someone else'
None of us asked to be born, but here we are.

It was not long ago in the UK that families were much larger and the average family would spend 50% of their income on food and the rest on rent, in less affluent countries today you generally need a larger family to increase the chances of survival through extra manpower to work the land and to negate the risks of increased mortality rates. Coincidently our capitalist system also realise on poorer countries than ours, the system falls apart if we were all well off (that's another conspiracy theory about why Africa is "kept" poor so we have another continent to use for cheap labour once Asia becomes too expensive). It is essentially how the UK and the west has become so affluent through the exploitation of other countries for the last couple of hundred years.

 

[KeepItSteel]

Water just gets transferred from one place to another. Its impossible to make it dissappear, every drop on the planet has been here for hundreds of millions of years and isnt going anywhere anytime soon.
The question is how you make use of it.

I wholeheartedly disagree with the waste of enrgy going into producing products, such as transferring bottled water/lamb/butter/potato's etc from one side of the world to the other, and ecological nonsense like UK sourced scampi being shipped to Thailand to be hand shelled, then shipped back to the UK - that kind of practice should be banned.

But I think you are then entering a whole other discussion, on how we are educated and most importantly WHO we vote in to govern us.

What will cause the most grief however, is grossly overpopulated, malnourished, governmentally corrupt countires fighting to get their piece of the pie.
Dont forget that Britain pumps in hundreds of millions (probably billions) in funding poorer EU states and third world countries.
Britain is far from perfect but we are at the very least paying our way.

 

[KeepItSteel]

in less affluent countries today you generally need a larger family to increase the chances of survival through extra manpower to work the land and to negate the risks of increased mortality rates. Coincidently our capitalist system also realise on poorer countries than ours, the system falls apart if we were all well off (that's another conspiracy theory about why Africa is "kept" poor so we have another continent to use for cheap labour once Asia becomes too expensive). It is essentially how the UK and the west has become so affluent through the exploitation of other countries for the last couple of hundred years.

That is bodering on complete nonsense.
The same old 'they breed more to survive' argument is used far too conveniently. Look at the difference in population growth between northern and southern India, they have the same amount of money to go around but are educated differently in opposing regions, the birth rate has fallen dramatically in the north and no fewer people are 'surviving'.
God forbid if I were born in a less fourtunate country, the last thing I would want do would be pump out 6 extra kids of the off chance that one or two of them might live long enough to help me scrape together a couple extra miserable years existance.
Why put your kids through that poverty and misery?
Whats wrong with making the best of what you've got and dying?
They seem to be doing a good job of making more of their kids survive than neccessary, otherwise we would be witnessing stable growth.
These countries, and the planet simply cannot cope with a population explosion like we are witnessing decade on decade.

I dont do conspiracy theories, so im not even going to go there.

 

[Easy_Rider]

Like we need more water in the UK

I understand your point, but the UK is one of the biggest wasters of resources and energy, we could do more and it can only benefit us anyway with the saving in money and less going to landfill.

But the transfer of water from a country that barely has any to one that has plenty is a problem, for example a lot of our cherry tomatoes come from Morocco where they are going ever deeper into their water table, that water table is not being replenished and local farmers producing food for the local population are starting to have problems, i wonder how many of us have thrown away those same cherry tomatoes (that's just one small example). Many other countries are experiencing desertification through large scale clearance of forests and river diversions for agriculture. All this affects local climates and habitat that has a knock on effect for the rest of us.

Another example, this is the result of rivers being diverted for agricultural projects. The Aral sea was once the 4th largest lake in the world, it was 3.5 times larger than Wales! Many of our clothes would have been made from cotton produced here.

The large scale clearance of the Amazon forest to produce cheap meat for the fast food chains has had several impacts. The cleared area quickly becomes unproductive and what is left is baron land. There is so much still to discover in that great forest not only in terms of wildlife but chemical compounds found in diverse plant material that have many medical uses. We are fast loosing this and its humanity that looses not just Brazil.

Less we forget, 60million people is a lot for a little island, and without the produce of much poorer countries with corrupt governments and very cheap labour we could not possibly support our population as the cost of living would dramatically increase. I wouldn't like to work for $1 a day but someone has to so that the richer countries can consume.