The Great Americas

Oh how I abhore your roaring as I utilize you to rid of my sin. How you bawl in a deeper voice as your task becomes more burdensome. As I stand, peering, I cannot help but be wrecked with guilt with respect to my actions. But I am helpless, incorrigibe to the extent of my excessiveness.


It is a weekly ritual to succumb myself to opening my fridge and ridding it of decomposing, at times putrid food. It is another job to extricate it of the lingering hodgepodge of smells that creep up to surprise when opening it's door. I casually look at the left-over spaghetti that I am mushing with my fingers through the garborator and it is an admittedly gruesome sight. However, the emphasis is not in the article that I am trying to rid off but in the action and the frequency of doing so.


Special attention is brought to my family and myself because we are absolutely criminal to the offence of WASTING.
Perspectives. Change of environment. Expectations. Past growing-up experiences. They are all highly-qualified factors in explaining our behaviour.
It is difficult to account for individuals on the derivation and uses of their resources but it is well known and might I add, accepted that residents of North America are extravagant and thriftless with regards to their resources.


Truly, we North Americans dwell in the land of bounty. Subjected to a society that thrives in capitalism, we revolve around an oligarchy of gargantuan corporations. Due to their colossal size in most markets, they acquire bargaining power, reap efficiencies of scale and in turn supply whatever goods or services at a mass scale. Countless times I stroll in grocery stores so massive that perhaps losing one's sense of direction is not such an inconceivable thought. It is true. Although all fundamental teachings in economics serve to etch the perfectly competitive equilibrium into one's mind, perfectly competitive markets do not exsit. It is merely a utopian ideology, simplifying matters allowing a more direct analytical perpective on problem-solving. However, in any market that permits free entry (one characteristic of perfectly competitive markets), we see numerous companies supplying that one product, given that the price is favourable. Choice is indeed delightful, but so many that befuddles a consumer? There have been times where I have stood in a shampoo aisle for half an hour (but in the sake of any argument, one may say that I have indecisive and hesitant tendencies.)


Surrounded by such vastness of goods, it is evident that a substantial majority will not be purchased...denied the privelege of being utilized. Not too worrisome for goods that do not have a shelf-life but quite perturbing for goods such as produce. Much pity for organic produce (with such a wondeful cause) whittling away on their stands. It is highly questionable as to what they do with food no longer fresh to a consumer's palette, most items no longer permissible to sell because of overdued expiriy dates. To the garbage dumps? I'm afraid so. Perhaps one of these faithful days, stop in your tracks at your grocery store, absorb the fact of how much of what you see will become waste. Astonishing.


Coffee. One of those inelastic goods that my addictive personality adheres to, a legal opiate that I am dependent on. One of my favourite convenient haunts, to much of my guilt, is Starbucks. I am contented to wait in line, giving me time to feast my eyes on the delectable outsourced bakery goods neatly organized in a glass case, and yet another painful decision-making circumstance to whether I should fatten myself up. On one occasion, as I walked out with Dan, expecially satisfied with a cup in my hand, I casually asked where all the unsold expiring bakery goods went and again I recieved another pitiful answer that they most probably got thrown away. To refute it, I questioned furthur: Was it infeasible to give it to the poor (via shelters, soup kitchens and such)?
It linked to another subdivision of topic: unsustainable reliance. Apparently, consistently giving to the poor creates complacency and further contributes to the overbearing burden on the government's budget...


Is our excess so irreconcilable?