Capitalism demands that we waste

The column below appears in this week's INM regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
I’m not a good shopper, not at all so when I was out in Ikea two weeks ago I was totally exhausted after less than an hour’s ‘retail therapy’. I was buying covers for a couch and chair. I had the adventure planned in advance.

Dublin Bus number 140 goes all the way from Rathmines to Ikea and since I live close to Rathmines, the logistics of getting there were easy enough. Although coming home, carrying the covers on and off the bus was a little tiresome.

See, I told you by nature I’m not a shopper. After the exhaustive 60 minutes shopping I decided it was time for food and headed to the Ikea restaurant.

That’s a clever idea of theirs. I can imagine many people are fit to drop by the time they have had an Ikea experience so they inevitably head for the food store. The food is fine, simple and cheap. I think I paid less than €4 for my lunch. Leaving back my tray in the tray disposal area when I finished I was struck by the number of plates that still had substantial amounts of food on them.

And what particularly struck me was that the portions in Ikea are of medium size, so why all the waste? Nor was it, I imagine because the food did not live up to the gastronomic sensitivities of the patrons. The food was fine.

Every European wastes 280kg of food every year. From farm to fork, 38 per cent of cereal is wasted, 56 per cent of fruit and vegetables, 24 per cent of meat and 13 per cent of milk.

But it seems to be a core principle of capitalism that we dispose of things as quickly as possible so that we can buy new ones. There is a frenetic race out there suggesting we keep buying and buying. That is of course unless the world of banking decides that it’s all got out of hand and they begin to scream for shirt tightening and all sorts of horrible corrective measures.

If you read this column on any sort of regular basis you will realise that I’m a keen cyclist. As a child a bicycle tube would be repaired at least two or three times before it was time to throw it out. These days if one gets a puncture the bicycle shop simply replaces the tube with a new one and the punctured tube is binned.

The average price for the job is €11.00. In vain I have looked for a bicycle shop that would repair punctures. Why would a bicycle shop not repair tubes and then have them ready for use when required and at a much cheaper rate? No, the modern world tells them, it’s not economical to do that.

Simply throw out the old one and replace it with a new one. It must have been in the early 1970s that skips began to become popular.

I remember a wise man commenting that they were the ultimate symbol of the ‘throw-away society’. At the time I felt he was just being an old fuddy-duddy.

But on ‘mature reflection’ I have come to realise how wise he was. This last winter I supplied all my kindling material for my fire from skips I passed while out walking my dog.

But besides what one sees in a skip, the skip has become a powerful symbol for the gigantic waste that has become part of our everyday lives.

Four summers ago I made the acquaintance of a German woman who was far from being down on her luck, indeed, I imagine she was a woman of some wealth. Guess what, when it came to end of a tube of toothpaste, she cut it in two and got another two or three washes out of it.

You might well laugh at it. But when you compare it to our shocking waste, it might stop you in your step and make you think again. It’s the economy stupid. And we are so stupid with all we waste.
In the throes of such waste it’s difficult to grasp that there are one billion people in the world without enough food to eat.

I might ask is there something about the way we live that’s simply wrong and unfixable.