Patricia Iverson

After hearing the founder of SCARCE, Kay McKeen, give a talk at York, I have heard her words that categorize all waste as resources and try to use this premise to guide my efforts at letting the 5 R's be my focus on decreasing waste disposal.

This is a more difficult task in the time of COVID 19.  I try not to use plastic at home or to purchase foods that come to plastic in the grocery store where I shop with my reusable tote and produce bags.  However, due to fear of contamination, I am more hesitant to buy unpackaged produce, to place produce in reusable produce bags, and even to place items in my reusable tote.  This would lead to a thorough cleaning of all alternatives to plastic packaging.  Instead, I have tried to purchase in bulk to minimize plastic or only purchase vegetables that are loose when I see that produce workers are gloved and then give the produce a more thorough washing anyway. I am bringing wax paper bags for produce.

Meat has historically always been something the wealthy could afford.  It takes a great deal of resources to grow one cow or pig.  In addition, they give off methane gas as a byproduct.  Also, instead of growing corn and soybeans for human consumption, much of what we grow is for feed for these animals. So it would be very advantageous to eliminate this cholesterol-laden food from our diets, freeing up land to grow crops to feed people, while cleaning the air of this source of methane.