Tag: food security

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Peace and War, poverty, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chris Brogan borrowed an idea from James Altucher: “Write a list of ten things every day. They can be 10 anythings. Ten terrible dates. Ten places to visit. Ten desserts I want to eat this year. Whatever.”

I won’t commit to making a list daily, but I was inspired to create these two after reading Chris’s post (which includes several samples of his own lists).

 

World Issues
  1. Help figure out how the 30-40% of food that’s wasted can instead be rechanneled to feed those who are starving–and help that get implemented (perhaps this is a place I can target my speaking; see Personal Goal #2, below)
  2. Help amplify the voices of those better qualified than I am to show countries how to solve disputes without going to war
  3. Help build more bridges between/among Left and Right/”woke” and “non-woke”/Muslims and Jews and Christians, etc.
  4. Corollary #1 to #3: Explore and amplify alternatives to counterproductive communication styles: calling-in instead of calling out, respect and listening while searching for common ground instead of shaming
  5. Corollary #2 to #3: Help people to understand that they are not stuck–that just because they have been caught in bad patterns doesn’t mean they are trapped there forever
  6. Continue to demonstrate that baking environmental and social justice directly into companies’ products, services, and mindsets can be highly profitable–find ways for this idea to gain much more traction in the mainstream business world (without having to join that world)
  7. Expose more companies to principles such as biomimicry, multiple function, and circular economy so that they can better understand the financial benefits of deep reimagining, deep re-invention, and regenerativity
  8. Show companies that solving these big problems while increasing profitability requires a mixture of Great Leaps and Kaizen, different in different situations–and that they can do both at once
  9. Corollary to #5: Bring the holistic and systemic analysis that helps determine the right solutions in the right situations, and recommend implementation strategies
  10. Help change mindsets from despair to active, participatory hope: helping everyone I meet understand that he/she/they have the power to effect meaningful change, in their own lives AND in the wider world. Show how ordinary people (usually working with others) have created movements that changed history.
Personal Issues
  1. Probe, discover, and overcome whatever internal barriers are still preventing me from achieving at a higher level–both in terms of impact and revenue–made good progress on this but clearly still have work to do
  2. Book more speaking gigs that pay a fee, whether virtual or live-stage or hybrid–especially international speaking that allows me to explore more parts of the world
  3. Land two or three new long-term consulting clients in the profitable social/environmental justice part of my business
  4. Find steady, decently-paying markets for articles or other types of content, as I had before
  5. Create the right offer for more readers/viewers/listeners to engage with me and come into my orbit
  6. Implement more of the enormous amount of good advice I’ve been given over the past few years
  7. Pick one of the several projects I’ve been tossing around, start it and run it: launch the retreat, the course, the pay-to-participate mastermind/mentoring group OR (not and) the resume-method licensing program
  8. Address issues of fatigue and focus, including lack of motivation, lack of follow-through, and more
  9. Keep up with the torrent of email, LI and FB messages, etc. and figure out a way to spot and respond to the important ones
  10. Continue to be a force in my grandson’s life, even if his parents move out of the area

 

And what are yours?

Please feel welcome to comment with some of your own goal lists. You don’t need ten things. Even one or two. And yes, you can share a whole list of ten if you want to. Just keep in mind that comments will be moderated and abusive or spammy ones will be removed.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, localism/locavore, Mindset, poverty, Psychology, Science, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,
A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg

I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.

Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.

This New York Times article describes two apps, Too Good to Go and Flashfood, that match unsold food with ready bargain-seeking buyers. I think this is terrific–a win-win-win. It reduces costs for restaurants, who still get paid a reduced price rather than having to pay to throw it away. It reduces costs for consumers who’d like a good meal and don’t mind taking whatever’s available. It reduces pressure on landfills, which are overrun with wasted food, and on the environment and climate, which take multiple hits when food is wasted.

Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.

On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:

  • What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
  • How to preserve various foods
  • Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
  • How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
  • What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
  • How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
  • When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
  • How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
  • Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)
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