Tesco trip

Hello consumers! I've been down to Tesco’s to pick up some vegetables and milk. Vegetables make me feel so healthy, good and sensible. You can’t beat green veggies and milk when it comes to living healthy but then today, I found myself looking at it from a different view all thanks to Doug! Here’s my problem; I understand that vegetables need to be packaged properly so that they stay fresh but do they really need to be plastered with plastic all over them? It's almost like these supermarkets are charging you for the packaging and not the actual product. I mean, vegetables don’t even need promoting or any special visuals on them. They’re kind of there for people who NEED them. All that packaging is unnecessary.

What do I do with all the packaging that’s left now? I've used the vegetables already and the milk's in the fridge but come two days later, I’ll be left with an empty milk gallon too. Will the gallon be waste? It's a good job my parents do the recycling otherwise I’d be a complete waster! Thanks to Doug, I even noticed something interesting on the carrier bag with this 'waste' game in mind. It says "This bag is biodegradable."  Oh and not to forget to mention, I also noticed a whole area in the Tesco carpark for recycling! But more on that in another post.

Wikianswers says "It means that the substance or object is able to be broken down by a biological agent such as bacteria so that the carbon in the substance can be used in living organisms

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_biodegradable#ixzz16uMouwx0"

If these carrier bags are biodegrabable, they can't be taking up too much space in landfill sites? Food rotting away in landfill sites though is another story. I'm horrified at what I've just read! Check this out guys!

Every day in the UK we throw away:

• 5.1 million whole potatoes
• 4.4 million whole apples
• 2.8 million whole tomatoes
• 7 million whole slices of bread
• 1.2 million sausages
• 0.7 million whole bars of chocolate and unwrapped sweets
• 0.3 million unopened packets of crisps
• And more…..

• Harmful gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) are produced when this food rots in landfill sites across the UK. 
• The energy used in food production, packaging, transportation and storage all goes to waste when we throw away food. 
• If we stop wasting food it would have the same impact as taking 1 in 5 cars off the road. 

In the UK we spend £10.2 billion every year buying and then throwing away good food. This is:

• £420 every year for the average UK household
• £610 every year for households with children
• Another £1 billion is then spent by local authorities collecting food waste and sending most of it to landfill

http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/parking_rubbish_and_streets/rubbish_and_recycling/recycling_reducing_reusing/love_food_hate_waste.aspx

How disgusting does that sound? This is what wisegeek.com had to say about Americans;

"According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.4 pounds (2 kg) of garbage a day, or a total of 29 pounds (13 kg) per week and 1,600 pounds (726 kg) a year. This only takes into consideration the average household member and does not count industrial waste or commercial trash. If this sounds like a staggering number, you would be surprised to know that Americans are not the number one producers of garbage in the world. In Mexico, the average household produces 30 percent more garbage than in America."

2kg a day?! That's astonishing!