La Voz de Galicia – September 29, 2023 →
Sometimes, around nighttime, several people gather around the trash container of the supermarket on Hudson street. They come with book bags, travel bags, and shopping carts. They search and search, and they always find things. I suppose that what they find are food items that are no longer acceptable to be sold, but that are probably in perfect condition. I suppose that their circumstances are complex because the cost of living gets higher every day in a city that has never been cheap. I suppose many things, and it is likely that my conjectures are only that. Those people who collect food from the container are probably as old as I, there is nothing to mark a difference, we even wear similar clothes: a t-shirt and some leggings…
Today is the International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. According to FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2022 there was an average of 735 million people who experienced hunger. And approximately «13% of produce is lost between their harvest and sale,» and «17% of the total production of food frequently goes to waste in homes, restaurants, and businesses.»
It is complicated to think how these two things happen at the same time, how hunger and waste live side by side in the same world, in the same places. The contradictions that human beings are capable of creating and recreating never ceases to amaze me: we are capable of fighting to love, but also to kill; we are capable of fighting for our rights, but also of ending them. We are a continuous contradiction. And in the meantime, the price of life, of food, is almost impossible to pay. And we, we can do nothing to change it…
