Waste = Food: A Commitment carried out from February 3rd to May 7th 2010, living on food that would only go to waste. -No longer restricted to waste, my experience with food is still being logged.
2nd: Tim sharing a freshly picked veggie with me, tasted similar to celery. I cant remember the name, but the pun was that "I was going to LOVE it" because it was call something with the word love in it ... lovage ... I caught Tim here busting his back at the Macoskey center. Today I'm happy to have the opportunity to taste food that was raised with intention and thought. Wrapping thing up at School for the last time, Kyle left a waste-stream apple in the lab for me. Also, that flash drive has been sitting in there for a few weeks, with out being claimed. I hope the owner finds it.Before leaving town, I ran around with a friend checking other dumpsters. not much of value was in the dumpster in the photo, just plastic flowers! we did find a quality Shot glass in some student trash.
Last dive at slippery rock rite aid, pbutter granola bars, Velveeta cheeze souse, the twilight new moon skybar, 100% natural cocoa fullbar, dove raspberry creme chocolate.
Friend Ev posted me the ingredients of Cheeezzz Cheese Sauce: Every package of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese contains a package of mix to make cheese sauce. The cheese sauce mix contains several milk ingredients: whey (milk protein), milk protein concentrate, milk, milkfat and cheese culture. The cheese sauce mix also contains salt, sodium tripolyphosphate, sodium phosphate and calcium ... See Morephosphate. According to the International Food Additives Council, sodium phosphates help cheese retain its melting properties and calcium phosphate improves nutritional value. Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are added to the sauce mix as colorings. Final ingredients in the sauce mix are citric acid, lactic acid and enzymes. According to the Food Additives and Ingredients Association, acids are added to foods as preservatives and emulsifiers. Enzymes are catalysts, and may help the cheese sauce reconstitute properly. (www.livestrong.com)
Had a Large, home cooked non-waste dinner at our friend kens house. I contributed some waste-stream crackers to the mix. I was so full. Was able to justify eating most of the goodies for various reasons, other than i am allowed because the commitment is over. I liked eating the last store bought salad in the house. Now he has his own lettuce growing and all future salads should be prepared with home grown. Other home grown and home-made ingredients were included this evening, including some of Bert's leftover homie chili. Delish. It was a good final dinner with good friends, Tim, Bert, Paul, and Ken.
I guess I'm just naturally a thrash digger and scavenger. Digging up in some students' trash I pulled out some Gatoraid, Peroxide, eggnoodles, mushroom soup, corn, and oatmeal. also, there was some leftover velveta mac-n-cheese that i didn't eat, (although I have before) but did clean out the container to give to the Macosky center. The peroxide, Georgia says that i shouldn't eat the peroxide, that I can use it for teeth brushing. Sounds good, teeth brushing is good, cooking with peroxide is bad.
Eating non waste-stream granola today along with my regular waste and my friends waste-bread. After Graduation was a reception. The hummus was the best. during this semester it was really rare to find hummus. there was also crackers, strawberry, pita bread, upside-down pineapple cake, and cochip cookie cake. I was in a suit and tie, digging in the trash. At the same time, one of the workers was emptying the trash bins, so he and i confronted each other twice while i was digging for food. He has a questionable look on his face, and i say it is a tough life... then, with dignified style, I put my blog business card in in breast pocket.
In response to posting this situation my Aunt say's it really doesn't look to bad, and a cousin say's that every time she goes to throw food away she thinks about me.
my response is of course it doesn't look bad, its just the typical story of putting more on your plate than what someone is really going to eat. then throwing away the excess as waste, when it should be treated as valuable food. The solution to food waste is simple, eat it. the prevention to food waste is also simple, take less.
Graduation Party night at classmate, Jake's. There, Bert brought a pot of her chili. I got a pic of the great moment of me finally being able to eat some of Bert's local home-cookin.
On the way home, picked up a bottle of milk that was laying on the sidewalk. I passed it earlier on the way to the party. Usually if i have my hands free, i pick up trash and recyclables when walking. on the way home, with a free hand, I picked it up thinking it was simply litter, but turned out to be an unopened bottle. cold outside, all day, so i had little worries about it being spoiled. ever since eating my friends granola, Ive been craving soy milk to go with it, but here, By The Grace of the WasteStream ... is Milk!
Featured: Alexander Hamilton, Waste stream ... on the ground.
Today was the end of the commitment of eating food that would only go to waste. This wasn't a very planned out ending but Today I ate a friends home-made granola mix. Justification? It's the end of the semester, i feel complete.
Before the non-waste granola, we checked out the Slippery Rock Dumpster. Two Easter Baskets with candy and toys. Also in there was a double decker chocolate moon pie (not Mini). Of course this is a let down for all those banana moon pie fans like Cory St. Esprit.
On a quick trip to a peaceful place outside of Slippery Rock, we found a pair of Flip-flops. Much more cumfy than my old pair, but the bad new is one has a blow out. I'm hoping to be able to repair it for the Uganda trip. My friend who brought the homemade granola, is also doing a fair share of scavenging. The bread in the photo is waste steam, picked up outside a grocery. So snacking on the non-waste-homemade granola was accompanied with waste-stream bread. Beginning on February 3rd, I had been surviving only on food that would go to waste. This was over 3 months, 13 weeks. At this point I am 90% sure that when living in the United States, or any other major afluent nation, i will not be purchasing any food from the industrial agriculture system. No reason to while i can survive off of waste-stream and use those funds to those working on extreme hunger.
Featured: Dan (I wear Toms' shoes) Snyder posing with the Snyder brand chips I found.
A friend of mine, Keith, has worked in different hotels in his life, he said that visiting teams and other groups would order boxes of pizza to their rooms... and then leave half of it in the hallway as trash. That seems like a typical situation, and reminds me of the times in my past when i would waste food. When I was full, many times I would just discard the leftovers. Today it just makes sense to hold on to leftovers because i know im going to eat again. I will be hungry again.
Gross, i ate this. Now i live to see another day. Egg salad sandwich, pizza, breadstick, funkified chickeniesause wrap.
Friend levi says grocery stores and bakeries are the way to go. Because not only will you find healthier things, they will be more sanitary. But I Understand this! I;m in a small community without much grocery selection and spending most of my time on a college campus. When I'm hungry i look for food. I'm trying to direct the impact to the college campus and individual behavior. Your'e right, good and fresh food is easy to get from grocers. look at this guy's work! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2x8nFKSc7Q Tristan Stewart's book "Waste"
Beef burrito, chicken tenders, fries. Lunch from SRU rockies diner. two people recognized me as the "trash man," never have i been so happy. i shared the food with kyle and dan, classmates. Picked up some lays chips later on. This is week 13 of my committement of eating food that would otherwise go to waste.
Featureing: the muffin I ate in replacement of all the junk food i'm eating from rite-aid
I ran into Bert when i had my mouth full with this prize. we chatted briefly about the crud ive been eating. Not hungry. heres a pic of a vew of my cohorts in our MS3 hub. I prolly took the photo because they have all eaten from the waste stream, or i took it because they are cool. hmm.
Feature: Lunch ... shared with kyleDear Amy, thank you for eating fig newtons from the waste-stream, I only hope that you were able to save a little cash from the snack so you can send those funds to a positive part of the economic system.
Ran around campus today with kyle. We grabbed some lay's chips from the trash, then headed to Rockies diner on campus for lunch. We picked up some fries, chicken tenders, and two tortilla wraps out of the trash. yum.
Last Environmental Economic Geography class session today. I gave the class 5 minutes of my waste-stream diet, since i wrote about it for our final paper. Thanks to kelsi's Face of Famine' I had a nice conversation piece. -I eat out of the trash -I don't suggest eating some of the food i eat -Sometimes i eat food knowing I will be sick -Don't know how many people could live off of SRU's waste. There is food waste at every level on the campus. -Markets and restaurants have rules about expired food.
At SRU sack lunches are available, you can apparently pick the contents of your sack. This one was in the trash. Banana, cookies, sandwich. I'm happy to have a real fruit, but I'm not the needy.
Dear slippery rock Rite-Aid, there are people who like to eat fancy candies, triskets, ritz, fig newtns, PB crackers, and mrs. Fields cookies. Why do you put them in your dumpster? The books i completely understand throwing away because our society, including this dirty hippie wanna-be, is pretty much illiterate anyway.
Featured: Kyle with the trees that were removed from campus, Dr. Snow replanted.
We have a photo of Kyle with the new home for his saplings that Dr. Snow saved and transplanted at her place. you had to be there, it was a moment.
Waste Stream emergency, before going to a SRU department party. Went out of my way to gather a bunch of danishes, strawberries, and grapes. I turned down a few doughnuts and pineapple because they were a little sloppy. This was on SRU in ATS building. there must have been a morning breakfast banquet for some high class meeting. The word on the street is that there are a lot of these types of events on campus that toss out the catered food. I can't be everywhere at once, nor can i eat it all myself. My suggestion to food waste is to eat it, rather than throw it away.
GGE Party End of the year party for the Geology Dept. at Slippery Rock. A social event. A large group of Friend. A large group of friends i havn't met yet. A Pot-luck. A perfect opportunity for me to get rid of some of my accumulated waste stream food (mainly the Banana Moon Pies). The danishes were a great fit to the all you can eat pot-luck dinner table. I also brought random cookies left from florida waste stream. I was having fun offering people banana moon pies. at first i was walking around and having conversations with people about moon pie power and waste stream issues. After that was exhausted i took a break. One of my friends had the great idea of passing a box of moonpies around the fire. So of the 30 or so people around the fire 3 people took a pie, bringing the total amount of moon pies served to people up to 10 for the night. An overall success. (it was discovered that banana moon pies may also double as a fire log ... who knew). Oh boy, we also brought out the hot dogs from SRU trash. cooked about 6 of them. it was a good time. we used a very very long stick, and got to give a few kids the chance to cook and eat some waste stream food.
We had a great question was submitted in reaction to an earlier post where a friend bashed Wa*-*rt (see Speak of the Devil, April 26, 2010). Anonymous says... "I understand how you define the problem of F-Walmart. My question is WHAT IS YOUR SOLUTION? National legislation to ban f-Walmart IN THE USA? A world government with a higher minimum wage? Problems ,inequities abound in a broken world..what do you propose we do about it?"
I've consulted the author of the posted topic. Our views are similar, but mine always seem a bit more extreme. The good lord knows that people have been fighting the negative environmental externalities of big corporations. Our solutions will not likely flip the coin in our favor, but in the meantime, there are those people who can feel that their hand gets burned when they touch the hot stove and continue to touch it, and there are those who feel it, and stop.
A solution from us is to raise awareness so people think twice before shopping there.For a human being to invest in a product that is contributing to so much hardship with our friends near and far, would be an insane behavior.Only a ‘sick’ individual would knowingly buy something that promotes human injustice. Knowledge is power.Once an individual has the privilege to be aware of a problem, then they have the responsibility to act.
---An ongoing personal debate has been on how to make a great change. Top-down or Bottom-up? Such as toward a clean energy, non-polluting transition from our current finite, non-renewable climate causing resources. Knowing that the Climate crisis issue is real and is impacting those in vulnerable areas all over the world, I am willing to invest and change my source of energy from coal fired electricity to PV solar electric.For 10 months I lived off of the electric grid.I was only doing what I thought was right and available.But my neighbor, is not as willing to make the investment and sacrifices in daily life as I had.
This debate has been on how to make the change. The individual must want to change. In this case the person must genuinely care. So this answer is about changing the human conscience.My opposition to this is that for 40 years, or many more, our government has known that our current track is not healthy for the future of the planet. I have been educated since 1st grade that there is a difference between renewable and non-renewable resources, that fossil fuels are a finite deposit.
It is so hard to do the right thing, It was my choice to invest in clean energy over coal fired electricity. this shouldn’t be a choice, the energy should just be clean and non-polluting. My stance is that it is my local, state and national government’s job to take care of me and my family. I question the government for not taking action at wars pace on this issue.
We are relating this to the issues at hand with corporations such as wa***art. Why does injustice exist? Because I am letting them get away with it. Why is my home community still dependent on fossil fuels for transportation and coal fired electricity? Because I am letting them when I don’t do anything. We, the people, have the responsibility to gather into interest groups and influence policy making.
-We could write to our Congresswoman, and if enough people do, she would feel that if she failed to address the problem that she would lose her seat. We could tell her that our communities are suffering and as our representative she should take the initiative to end that.
-We could ask wa***art for donations for a good cause and then use it to support their own sweatshop workers
Lets make a wildly popular children's series that makes the next generation attached to third world people and their needs and grows up seeing corporation in the same way the baby boomer population viewed communism as a threat to our own security. In fifty years time Americans can be a changed people but the time it will take will still cost suffering but you have to start somewhere.
Instead of teaching kids to feel fortunate to live here, they need to feel and obligation to make sacrifices to bring fortune and human rights to people who need it more. Churches could be doing this; converting Americans to be aware and caring about all people of earth, not just Americans. Americans could make a big difference
Lately I've been eating so much junk food from the Slippery Rock Rite-Aid dumpster. I found an additional junk food supplement of cookies and doritos to compensate my diet. Am still working on the bag of carrots kyle found in the trash.
Featured: 9 out of a 10 piece nugget. (I am anti-mcd's)
Above: Photo of what I rounded up from a post-party mess (I prayed for chicken, God said Dig)
It really was a big day, even though im still eating from the April 16 rite-aid score i'm sort of craving non-junk food. Shared some waste stream pretzles with classmates, then before class I dug through the trash cans following a banquet in my building. I prayed for Chicken, god said ... wayne, you are gona have to dig. So i pulled my sleeves up. after recovering a biscuit, a whole macadamia nut cookie, whole choc. chunk. cookie, a bowl of noodle stuff, and two picked on pieces of chicken, I found a whole, untouched piece. it was very rewarding. its a shame that it was in the waste with a billion hungry people in the world. I did the best i could to eat every part of the chicken, and did my best to encourage kyle, who i shared the meal with, to eat more of the chicken as well. everything soft and crunchy can be eaten. I felt good about it, even had a chat with Dr. Hathaway about what he has witnessed of African eating methods.
good just kept coming, without much thought or effort on my part. As I was tossing the plate scraps, there was a Sheetz sandwich in the trash can. My plate is always full. Kyle ate the whole thing. it looked good enough for me. Kyle somehow has a nose for scores. Even today he pulled out a whole apple out of the trash. After that I found the 9 of 10 piece chicken.Then on his way home tipped me off for the concession stand trash cans. Thats where I pulled up 12 hotdogs, a package of uncooked popcorn, a bag of popped corn, and a stack of paper cups.
The waste stream calls. Kyle tipped me that trash cans at the track/field have some goodies. burning daylight. wam
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Featured: Dr. Stewart with his end of the year parting gift from Kyle and I, A sprouting Red Oak Acorn.
I attempted to instruct the good Dr. on how to care for the baby oak tree, knowing that i know nothing about it. But I did share with him that it could be estimated that the tree will sequester about 600 lbs of carbon in its life (just a random reference from one of our sustainability books) and that about 20 lbs of carbon is emitted from every gallon of gasoline used in his car. So, if he has a 15 gallon tank, then 15 gal x 20 lbs is 300 lbs of carbon per tank. I suggest for him to consider planting 2 trees for every fill-up.
Today I found somebody who likes the Banana Moon Pies. Four ants. I wonder if they could take the last 4 boxes that I have, off of my hands.Kyle found a bag of carrots in the trash. Found a slice of pizza and a leftover piece of pizza crust. Spent some time with classmates after our last class today at the Brew Pub. I took a photo of the onions, tomatoes, and piece of lettuce that wasn't going to be eaten.
featured: the last dive at slippery rock Rite-aid
2nd: Tim sharing a freshly picked veggie with me, tasted similar to celery. I cant remember the name, but the pun was that "I was going to LOVE it" because it was call something with the word love in it ... lovage ... I caught Tim here busting his back at the Macoskey center. Today I'm happy to have the opportunity to taste food that was raised with intention and thought.
Wrapping thing up at School for the last time, Kyle left a waste-stream apple in the lab for me. Also, that flash drive has been sitting in there for a few weeks, with out being claimed. I hope the owner finds it.
Before leaving town, I ran around with a friend checking other dumpsters. not much of value was in the dumpster in the photo, just plastic flowers! we did find a quality Shot glass in some student trash.
