Monday, 18 February 2008

  •    Entry 228: What happens to restaurant food?

    I've discovered a little gold mine of information recently and I've got to share it with the rest of you.  I've discovered an online little mag called "The McGill Daily." It's canadian, so it's decently relevant to what's going on and because it's a university paper, not AS likely to be influenced by money or political power... that's not confirmed though.  The little gem of an article in the haystack was this little thing titled, "Waste not, want not: What Montreal restaurants are doing - or not doing - to divert leftover food from dumpsters and landfills." I found it while I was on a quest to find out what happened to the loaves of bread bakeries like Terra Breads or COBS at the end of the day.  It was Valentine's Day evening and we were walking down West 4th Ave in Kitsilano at the end of the work day and it seemed that all the bakeries were just closing up.  Terra Breads was the one that we noticed in particular; there were two girls putting loaves of bread into this big frosted bags.  Where do they trek them?  I still don't know, I'm going to have to ask some random bakeries next time I remember.  I'll try to keep tabs on the answers and post them up once I get a few. 

    Anyway, so in summary, the article says that the average U.S. family wastes between 40-50 pounds of food per week. The methane gas produced from decomposing food in Canadian landfills produces approx. 57 thousand metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.  I can't even imagine what that really translate to in physical weight!  Not only is it causing an environmental issue, it's a  huge waste of money, effort to grow and transport the food to our homes, and it wasted food that could have been saved to feed so many other people around the world that actually need it. Some business in Montreal, Quebec, Canada have been taking some measures to reduce their impact ranging from giving you a choice among portion sizes and getting charged extra or composting wasted food. 

    So in conclusion to that entry, think again before you order what's on the menu and make sure you aren't ordering with hungrier eyes than your stomach can handle...

    In addition, I've found that my community has a program called Community Angel Food Runner's Program which picks up fresh food and produce that the groceries have decided to donate (ie. bread that they weren't able to sell the day of baking it) from grocers like Stongs, Safeway, or Choices and more.  There are other places like Urban Fare where I've heard from word of mouth that dump their excesses because they don't want to ruin their rep.  Something about how their customers paying premium price for their goods, which should a bum get the good stuff for free if it's just a day old.  I think that's really really wasteful of them to think that way. A lot of pollution went into transporting the materials to MAKE the bread, energy (electricity and human labour), and packaging only for it to get dumped into a landfill.  That's ridiculous.  I'll confirm with the PR dudes by email if I can that this is what they are doing and if so... time to start a campaign to stop them for being total retards.

    *********************

    On the personal side, a lot of things have happened in the past little while.  I'm attempting to sell my optical store and seem to have some superficial interest and one medium interest.  I say medium because she wants to see my store where as the other ones where only interested in some information.  I remember has a young temp at my college while I was a student and she was starting her company.  I guess she's looking to expand, which is great that I have some info on her background.. makes her more legit in my eyes. She still doesn't know me yet and I don't know if she would when se sees me anyway.  I'm not sure if I should let her know how I knew her since she had very little dealings with my in college anyway, if it would help or hold back things.

    I went to a wedding held by Dave's friends and had a really good time.  It was a pretty traditional chinese wedding with a little korean flair to it, essentially the korean traditional dress that the couple changed to at the second half of the wedding banquet.  I was commented on by two of Dave's friends and it really put the flame to my ego, what girl wouldn't when a guy says she's pretty?  I did notice one of the guy's girlfriends was really pretty, like HK movie star pretty and he glowed when I mentioned that he was really lucky to have such a pretty gf. I think if she had her own choice of dress instead of wearing the bridemaid's dress, she would have been stunning.  Anyway, it was fun to hang out with the guys at their table and sort of dote on the one or two drunken boys.  I kinda like Dave's occasional drunken episodes, he's pretty smiley and happy and really relaxed not that he's stressed out most of the time to begin with hehe. 

    I can't think of anything else at the present moment, so until the next episode... ta ta!!!

    138

  • Choose Identity

  • Give eProps (?)

  • New! You can now edit your comments for 15 minutes after submitting.