Waste

We read in the ARA a fact more, with a percentage increase, which allows us to say once again that each home is a world in itself, but which, nevertheless, is shocking. "Each citizen of the European Union generates 132 kg of food waste and throws away 12 kg of clothing and footwear each year." Europe "intends" (what an uncommitted verb) that each Member State meet objectives. "By law, by December 3, 2030, at the latest, producing companies will have to reduce food waste by 10% in food processing and manufacturing, and retail trade and restaurants (as well as households) will have to reduce it by 30%."

I don't understand how they want this to be done. Will they come to our house and check if an orange from the other day's bag already has penicillin in it? Will they check that the dried bread turns into breadcrumbs and that the breadcrumbs don't, in the long run, become filled with insects? Will businesses—supermarkets, for example—have to throw away ten percent less than they normally do? Why ten percent? Why not nine or eleven percent?

Not long ago, we were all very happy and satisfied paying for designer tapas for 50 euros. And at the same time, they said, also very happy and satisfied, that Catalans are stingy, that they make bread from stones. Our cuisine is about leftovers: bread soups, to use up stale bread; cannelloni, to use up roast beef; arrope, to use up the fruit and vegetables left in the garden in the fall… Even bread with tomato sauce can be used to use up day-old bread. In the end, time proves us right. I always say, at home, that if we put a euro in a piggy bank every time half a zucchini goes bad or we don't use up the leftovers of a fish we've cooked for lunch, we'd realize. My grandmother used to say, "Don't let the sink be the best food," meaning you couldn't even throw away the water from boiling chickpeas. She was right. We're crazy.