Waste not, want not

It's been said that Americans throw away almost 40% or more of all the food produced in this country.  After seeing what some grocery stores throw away just in "expired" produce I can believe that number is low.  At least some grocery stores have started to compost their expired products but more needs to be done to better plan for the consumer demands and we as consumers can do a lot more to change our eating and living styles to waste less. 
  I'm not talking about going out and becoming a freegan and dumpster diving for our food but I do applaud the freegan's tenacity.  A lot of our wastefulness has to do with attention to detail and having the frame of mind to think about things differently.  Not so long ago Americans who were too poor to afford the Filet Mignon cuts or even the rump roast ate the other parts of the animal that we now throw away by the millions of pounds.  A massive foodie revolution is occuring bringing back these "peasant" foods like tripe, tongue, oxtail, liver, heart and kidneys and it is delicious!  Imagine how many more people in this country we could feed if we could take away the stigma that people have acquired about eating these types of meats.  They are not bad for us, we're not poisoning ourselves by eating blood sausage (no worse than eating a rare cooked piece of meat) and most of the time the flavor is more rich and tasty than the choicest cuts of meat.  If we used more of the cow to feed more people we could also cut down on the environmental impact of massive feed lots.
  Now I don't recommend eating large portions of offal every night for dinner in lieu of a steak.  James and I consume any type of meat in reasonable portions and always less than the vegetables we eat in one meal.  Cooking with so many fresh vegetables, however, usually leaves me with a pile of cuttings, peels, and trimmings from prepping these veggies and I hate throwing them in the trash.  Composting is also an act that has acquired a big stigma for most Americans because it can be a stinky bug filled business.  With the rapid decline of our top soil and the massive amounts of waste we put in landfills every year it should be much higher on everyone's priority list.  Composting can even be done in a third story walk-up apartment with the new electric composters or even worm bins - the trick is educating people on the balance between vegetable material and brown material such as wood chips, coffee grounds or natural paper.  As long as a balance is kept there is no stench or bug growth.
  Throwing out more than one large kitchen trash bag a week also starts to weigh on my conscience.  Luckily for me in California we have mandatory recycling laws and separate recycling trucks that come around (other parts of the country have similar programs).  I always keep at least 5 brown paper bags (reused from Whole Foods or other grocery stores) sitting around the trash can for paper goods, non CRV plastic/glass/aluminum, a CRV plastic, CRV glass and a CRV aluminum.  California Redemption Value (CRV) is a program that California has that allows you to turn in bottles to a recycler for a cash refund - 5 to 10 cents a bottle.  Yes, sometimes the kitchen can start to look a little like a recycling center but for those of you that have garages or storage rooms those are great places to put your recycling areas.  The clutter of the recycling is less unnerving to my OCD brain than throwing all that away into a landfill - especially when I can make some money from it!
  There are many other ways I always try to be less wasteful all of which help my healthy figure, my electric bill and the planet.  My challenge here is to see how you can think of ways to be less wasteful and to get your family involved as well.  Kids can be doubly influenced by saying they are helping the planet and by giving them any money you save to their piggy banks!