The Cost of Waste: Inequality and Excess in Our Food System

One thing I really hate is waste of any kind. There are so many people suffering due to a lack of access to resources, and then there are tremendous amounts of resources being thrown away. Forty percent of food in America is discarded, and considering our notoriety for how much we consume, we could potentially feed a great deal of the world with just the efficient distribution of those resources alone.

Food waste is built into our system, a fact I learned while working at a raw vegan grab-and-go style juice and smoothie shop called Organic Avenue, which also sold raw food. It had a cult following and people paid premium prices for their food. Admittedly, the food was well thought out, healthy, convenient, and delicious. Initially, their juices came in beautiful glass bottles that could be reused. All the other bottles were made from recycled corn and other sustainable materials. However, food at Organic Avenue was prohibitively expensive and not at all accessible to the average person.

Some of their 14-ounce juices cost 15 dollars. This speaks to the inequality associated with access to health. This comes in the form of access to produce and fresh food, access to fitness, having the luxury of time to make healthy choices, and spending the time required to focus on such things. Then, the convenient options are 15 dollars a bottle. Due to the nature of the product (raw, vegan, etc.), many of the juices had an extremely limited shelf life—about 3-5 days, depending on the type of juice. Given the high-end clientele, we did not risk letting juices get close to their expiration date, so there were a lot of juices marked as expired that were still good.

Eventually, I learned how much food and juice was getting thrown out and fashioned my diet around this store's menu. I became extremely healthy and did so almost completely for free due to the amount of food employees were allowed to take home. One thing I noticed was that at 8:57 PM a juice would be 15 dollars, and last-minute customers would purchase a couple. About four minutes later, we would fill up trash bags full of bottles of juices and bring them out to the curb. Eventually, a crowd would await this moment, knowing there would be food, juice, and dessert delicacies in their plastic packages, completely appealing, fully nutritious, and free.

Of course, the people getting the food in this fashion were seen as low-class or unworthy, but those who paid 30 dollars for two juices minutes before were considered smart and prestigious.

So, I began to realize that in order to sell a 15-dollar bottle of juice, it was necessary to throw out juice because it costs only 3.50 to make.

The excess we produce necessitates waste. Anyone who works in the food industry can attest to the fact that, instead of selling food at a universally viable minimum, we profit and sell food to a smaller portion of people at a higher cost, in order to maximize profits, not caring at all about the kind of suffering this system inflicts on the global world.

During the lunch rush at this store, I would make smoothies, and we were supposed to fill little sample cups with different flavors to entice people to purchase a whole smoothie. We were so slammed with demand that we would make a ton of smoothies and ration them out quickly into the smoothie cups as they were ordered. This whole system invited chaos, but the pace of servicing customers took precedence. Sometimes, we’d be trying to give away the sample cups and couldn't do it because we’d made so much smoothie.

On one such day, I used all the wasted smoothie to paint an image, which I did in the sink. I think it’s beautiful but it’s also very symbolic of sheer waste, as the colors you are seeing are from the most hyper-expensive, specific organic ingredients. It’s really sad.

Anyway, the amount of waste is a travesty and the inequality in this world is completely out of hand. If things were better distributed, we could be living in a wonderful place. I should be painting with whatever color I want with luxury smoothies. Sadly, this doesn’t apply just to food. This principle pretty much exists across every industry as this is what happens when you maximize profit as the incentive for everything. None of it is sustainable and there will be a high cost to pay.

A painting made with Organic Avenue’s “Total Sweetheart”, “Nirvana”, “Lightweight” and “Powerhouse” smoothies. Retail value of this photo is approximately $44 dollars.

Another one. Here we have our “Total Sweetheart “and our “Dragon’s Breath” smoothie coming together for this expressive piece.

Thanks for reading!