The most amazing thing about this year’s Open House was the chance to meet Katharine Hibbert; I had no idea when I was exchanging emails with her about guiding round her flat this weekend that she was the writer (and squatter extraordinaire) of Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society. The lady has done what my mentor has been suggesting I better do if I want to get over my fears of living without money; live on nothing for a year- and survive intact. Orwellian style.
With 20 million tonnes of food being wasted in the UK every year – fresh, still packaged, still completely edible, not even past its ‘best before’ date kind of food- it’s no wonder Hibbert managed to live off of bins for a year and not lose a pound of weight; admitting she actually ate better than she ever ate whilst working as a top journalist in London and even found free shelter in London’s abandoned homes that were better areas and more centrally located. She spent 54p in 2 months- MADE, pay attention!
The amount and scale of exactly how much food and resources we simply throw away may sound ridiculous to people from countries where poverty is widespread- DVD players that still function, bag loads of PRET sandwiches (priced at £3+ per sandwich that very morning, on the street in a binliner by 6pm because it has to be sold on the day its made). This is capitalism on steroids. It makes more economic sense (caution: word ‘sense’ used loosely) for companies like M&S and even the Co-Op to just throw away sack fulls of food at the end of a business day rather than mark prices down on stuff about to go ‘out of date’. The out of date policy is a dubious one anway- threatening markets like the Billingate- open for 700 years in this country- to shut down because traders can’t get their heads round the concept of having to throw away produce prematurely. If you thought there was good will in them chucking out products less desirable to a buying public- can you believe they actually spray it with bleach or blue dye half the time to prevent the poorer public from even being able to pick it up?!
Insanity.
Farmers produce 40% more produce to cater for surplus demands (often never required), we ship over excess amounts from developing countries, causing local prices of staples like rice and flour to rocket, and if a crater of juice is knocked along the way, or a box of cereal has a misprint on it- the entire lot, thousands of boxes worth, are chucked in landfill or incinerated. Each wasted apple carries with it not only the chance to feed someone but all the embodied energy of growing, fertilizing, green-housing, pest-controlling, not to mention the air miles of shipping it over from God only knows where. The 20 million we chuck does not even begin to take into account the amount of food that’s rubbished on a daily basis by manufacturers and suppliers- who dump well before stats can be gained. This is in the same country that houses almost 2 million malnourished people (the UK) and 1 in 7 elderly pensioners starve here. I remember when students from abroad that I used to hang out with would sniff at people asking for change near tube stations, commenting on how ‘disgusting’ and ‘unbelievable’ it is that these people have the ‘guts’ to ask for money in ‘a country like this’. Like its their fault a country like this is being run by the Pigs. It is disgusting. It is unbelievable. That despite everything we have the power to accumulate, own and make use of- we still have people dying in our streets from lack of resources.
http://www.squatter.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=29
I ain’t scared of bleeding
I’m scared of breathing
In this world where everything is so uneven-
That if millions die in the Congo it’s barely news
But if a footballer’s wife should by a pair of shoes?
Arub Saqib 