2010 Resolution

It's that time of year again, the time when we eat portions meant for a family, drink enough alcohol to keep a giant snoozing away, and run up credit card bills so high it makes the national debt look tiny. When asked about resolutions, most people have the same responses: reduce debt, lose weight, quit smoking, quit drinking, the usual (all of which happen to coincide with the excess of the holiday season). Every year I have a few personal resolutions, some I keep, some I don't. I've never liked putting all my eggs in one basket and I guess I feel the same way about my life improvements (especially since the Wall Street Journal claims 88% of all resolutions end in failure). This year as usual I have a few resolutions, but one that stands out above the rest, that one is to be less wasteful. Wastefulness comes in many forms, money, food, resources, time, but I'm not going to limit myself.



The original idea came about when I started contemplating joining a Community Supported Agriculture group, know as a CSA, one of the two movements in regards to knowing where and how your produce is grown (the other being a Co-Op). CSA's and Co-Op's are similar in that you are going right to the source for locally grown organic produce at a price similar to that of the pesticide covered, biologically mutated produce that's shipped from across the globe that's available at the super stores (and much cheaper than organic grocery stores), but differ in how much you're invested (but that's a topic for a future post).

I've always been a proponent for shopping local, (preferring to shop at local brick and mortar stores over catalogs or online to both support the local economy and receive customer support that can't be compared to that of far distant phone operators) so CSA's were an instant interest to me. The first issue that came to mind however was how much produce Steph and I currently waste. Often one of us will want to cook a dish that calls for a particular fruit or vegetable but in much smaller amounts than are available for purchase. The excess produce then gets lost in the fridge and we never use it, instead allowing it to become a decaying organism that would rival that of a fifth grade science fair. This is a big issue when you have no choice in exactly what produce and how much you receive each week.

After contemplating how we'd be able to make personal changes to reduce our wastefulness, I realized that we'd also be making a extra savings. By wasting less food, we'd be saving the money that we were already throwing in the trash. With the additional price savings a CSA would grant us over organic grocers, joining became an obvious decision and it was just a matter of deciding which farm we felt best suited us, but that's not where my brain stopped turning.

Where else were we being wasteful that would not only benefit our pockets but also the world around us? I can't count how many times I have returned from the store only to realize I forgot something I needed and had to return, sometimes multiple times a week. How many gallons of water have I let run down the drain with out first serving a purpose (probably in the thousands)? How much packaging have I had to throw away or recycle (because even the act of recycling uses resources in the form of energy and emissions) that could have been eliminated by purchasing in bulk or refusing to purchase overly packaged products? How much money have I given away to big banks and corporations in late and overdraft fees? How many years of my life have I wasted staring at a stupid screen in boredom. I have always thought of myself as a supporter of cutting environmental and fiscal waste, but looking at it from the outside for the first time I've come to realize that just because I sort the plastics from cardboard and vote against supporters of political pork doesn't mean I'm doing everything I can. I'm sure you're not either.

Here's to 2010 (pronounced twenty-ten, not two thousand ten), not just the year of the tiger but the year of reducing waste.



References:
WSJ - The Science Behind Failed Resolutions
Local Harvest:An Online Resource to Local and Organic Produce