The Journey of Bread: Notes from an Empty House in Croatia (2)

General News Jan 1, 1970By Emily Carter 0 views

Editor's note: The author is a student in the Department of Environmental Engineering at National Cheng Kung University and is studying agriculture as an exchange student in Croatia. This piece follows the previous article, sharing what was seen after the squat (occupying vacant houses) action: astonishing food waste...

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Looking for food while taking a walk at night

In the opening of the documentary <The Age of Stupid>, the footage of tens of thousands of loaves of bread being thrown away in Vienna must have left a deep impression on anyone who has seen it, but even a documentary that was actually filmed still falls short of the shock of seeing it with your own eyes.

During the first two weeks after first arriving at the squat , I often went out with everyone at nine or ten at night pushing a cart, looking on the streets for things others had thrown away that we could use. And the main task—finding food.

Bread shops and pizza shops usually close at ten or eleven, so when they are preparing to close we go in and ask whether they have any leftover food to throw away. "It feels like begging..." I believe many people were muttering the same thing in their hearts as I was at the time. Of course, more than half of the shops ignore us; some directly give a big bag and say not to make it a habit; some sell it very, very cheaply, about 10% or 20% of the market price; and some are already familiar with us, so they have it ready and just hand it to us.

One of the pizza shops is something of an old friend. Every time we go, they give us a big bag, mostly french fries, plus some burgers and pizza. Holding that bag of fries that feels heavy even with one hand, I was a bit stunned. If we did not take them from them, would this food really be thrown into the trash can every day, five kilograms, ten kilograms at a time?

According to Lea, who had previously worked part-time in a bakery, the submarine sandwich in my hand sold for 15 kuna (NT$75) in the bakery, while the whole bag of 20 kilograms of overnight bread on the right plus the submarine sandwich in my left hand were bought back by us for 16 kuna (NT$80). I know it cannot be calculated this way, but looked at from another angle, that whole bag of bread after one night was worth only NT$5, while the original market value of that whole bag of bread in the bakery was more than a thousand NT dollars....

Waste, only because they "can afford it"?

This bread was thrown away absolutely not because it was toxic, spoiled, moldy, or wormy and inedible, but only because it "could not be sold." This is Croatia. The average salary is even lower than the starting salary that young people in Taiwan cry over so miserably, while prices are the same as in Taipei, maybe a bit more expensive. Every day so much bread is thrown away here, and this place is not even in the EU, so many laws for food safety or public health do not yet exist, such as not being allowed to feed pigs food meant for humans; overnight food is also not allowed to be sold; defective products cannot be sold and must be thrown away immediately.

Think about how much food other European countries throw away every day after adding these restrictions. This is also why dumpster diving is so common in high-income countries, because everything that can be bought in supermarkets can be found in the trash. In yesterday's news here in Croatia, supermarkets in Croatia throw away on average four billion kuna worth of food every year, which is food worth about NT$20 billion thrown into the trash every year, and this figure comes only from supermarkets, not including food thrown away by restaurants, vegetable markets, and households.

Finally, many restaurants do not give leftover food to poor people or friends not because they do not want to, but because they are not allowed to. They cannot bear the risk after a problem occurs. When I previously worked for room and board in a restaurant in Denmark, many meals had to be thrown away perhaps because the plating was messed up or one corner was burnt, and we often had to snatch them back before they were thrown into the trash. However, this was not because the people working in the kitchen were unwilling to eat defective products; often there was simply too much and their stomachs could not handle it, so they really had no choice but to throw it away.

What about Taiwan? Many buffet restaurants have a plan at the end letting everyone take as much as they can eat, but I have seen many, many buffet restaurants throw plate after plate of food into the food waste bucket right in front of us. Although someone will buy the food waste to feed pigs, since when did this story of people preferring to give food to pigs rather than to poor people gradually become a matter of course....

A previous report mentioned that "each consumer in North America and Europe wastes about 95-115 kilograms of food per year, while consumers in southern Africa as well as South Asia and Southeast Asia discard only about 6-11 kilograms of food per year," and the main reason those countries waste so much food is actually just because they "can afford" it?! (Series to be continued)

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The Journey of Bread: Notes from an Empty House in Croatia (2)

Looking for food while taking a walk at night

Waste, only because they "can afford it"?

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