finding resilience in uncertain times | climate, food, energy, safety, money

Read: “Waste” by Tristram Stuart

This was one of the most captivating books I’ve read in a while—and it’s not because of the writing. It’s because the story is so astonishing. The sheer scale of waste, and the idea that we could reduce a lot of the pressure on the planet and feed the starving, simply by avoiding so much waste, is really appealing to me.

I thought I knew a lot about the food system and humanity’s impacts on the planet, but none had made it clear how big of a contributor food waste is. Reading this book was like watching a slow-motion train wreck: you see metal and bodies flying, and it’s painful to watch, but you can’t look away.

About the writing… Stuart doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of how many numbers and figures to throw at readers. He puts in way too many numbers, enough to make my eyes glaze over sometimes—and I’m a numbers guy, with a Bachelor’s in physics!

But still, if you excuse problems like that, and cherish the fun details about how he raises his pigs, or feeds himself and his friends out of grocery store bins, and things like that, then you’ll learn a lot about how the food system is today—and why it really doesn’t have to be that way.

Buy the book from IndieBound, by clicking on the cover above, or their logo.