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Despite food shortages worldwide, a culture of waste pervade the U.S. and Britain

In the current climate of rising gas and food prices, it should stand to reason that people would find ways to change their most wasteful habits. According to new research from the UK, we need look no further than our own refrigerators. Fully 18 percent of all food purchased for household use in England and Wales is thrown away. The number is even higher for families with children at 27 percent. A now four year-old study of similar measure in the U.S. puts the American number around 14 percent, with nearly half of all food readied for harvest never making it to a dinner table. It is hard to imagine that just two generations ago these numbers would have been unthinkable.

While some measure of food will always be ruined due to environmental factors on its way into the market, much of the food wasted on tables in the UK and the U.S. is due to poor planning and over-purchasing on the part of consumers. The effects of all that waste reach far beyond a monetary loss on the consumer’s end; when the packaging, shipping, production, and waste management costs are factored in, the overall financial consequence skyrockets. What was most illuminating to the researchers was that ultimately the problem is a cultural one. We have grown accustomed to an uninterrupted bounty and the economic impact has not yet grown severe enough to change peoples’ habits significantly.

Via BBC

Degrading plastics may cause serious toxic risk to ocean dwellers and, eventually, us

Last fall we reported on the growing mess of garbage swirling in the North Pacific Gyre. It’s a swath of ocean arguably the size of the continental U.S. where all the plastic refuse from Asia and the western coast of North America ends up when it’s washed out to sea. Turtles mistake bags for jellyfish and birds mistake floating chips for prey. Animals have been discovered starved to death because the entire contents of their stomachs were plastic fragments. Sail a boat out to the middle of the gyre and the problem is in plain sight. Unfortunately for us, the more severe problem is the one we can’t see.

Plastics don’t biodegrade like organic matter, which means they can’t be converted by living organisms into useful compounds for life. Instead, they photodegrade, a process by which photons from the sun’s rays pulverize the plastic polymers until they are broken into individual molecules. Even when they have been smashed into the tiniest bits physically possible, they are still plastics.

What’s worse, the plastics act as a kind of magnet for toxins in the water, accumulating chemicals on their surface. The worry now is those toxins will be transferred to the bodies of the animals eating the debris.

Already, British researchers have discovered that in a “typical sample of the sandy material gathered� along shorelines, one-quarter of the weight may be plastic particles.

The trouble for us comes when those polymers enter the food chain. Jellyfish are already mistaking the non-microscopic bits for zooplankton. Larger fish eat the jellyfish and so on up until you’re eating a tuna filled with plastic dust and toxins.