There is always a solution

Before I gave up my car last year, I had moments of panic thinking about the situations in which I had always used my wheels – OMG, how shall I visit friends in out-of-the-way villages/ transport heavy items/ buy bulky items/ pick visitors up at the train station/ go cross-country skiing/do the grocery shopping? Ah, there is the most important one; one does eat 3 times a day. I had visions of daily trips to the supermarket and being reduced to crackers and packaged soup at times when I was under the weather.

I have missed old Huckleberry, my dark blue Corsa, although less than expected, and I have discovered something valuable; there is always a solution. Let’s make that the watchword for today: There is Always a Solution! Often there are two or three.

It’s clear that in public-transport-networked Zurich the train and bus are often the answer. Then there is my e-bike and the car-sharing organization Mobility. My front-hall bookcase is festooned with train and bus schedules and reminders to top up the bike battery. And hey - let’s not forget friends who kindly transported me to the garden center.

And then there is the quieter brother of transport possibilities: the

Internet. Like most of us I ask myself at least once a week how I ever lived without it, and to the e-mail and research possibilities are now added train schedules, Google maps with their directions printed out and carried with me, research into products that I then order and have delivered – all from my laptop – whee! Best of all is the online grocery store. Once a month I get out my list and peruse this fun site, with its descriptions and pictures of all the products. How about some goat’s cheese this month, and oh! they have butternut squash already and still have corn on the cob. These cookies are especially good and this British cheese is hard to come by in the grocery store and these dried tomatoes are juicy and not leathery.

All this in addition to all the heavy bottles of olive oil and vinegar and cartons of fruit juice and bags of oats and rice that are among the staples ordered every month. A chatty and friendly young man hauls the bags up the stairs and into the apartment, and frankly I enjoy this service no end. Ordering regularly brings the boon of coupons that largely defray the delivery charge. I enthuse about this service to everyone I know.

Now we come to Mac, the cart on two wheels that I drag after me

on trips to the farmer’s market. Mac (his large carrier bag is plaid) has become my constant companion, and not only fresh produce, but also plants for the balcony, items from the free exchange market, heavy trash bags and compost buckets, bundled newspapers for the old paper collection and books to and from the library have trundled satisfactorily therein. Mac combines especially well with the low-entry buses and trains, and joins the strollers, prams and wheelchairs jostling for position in the vestibule.

But then came the period when I used Mac especially heavily and managed, on a trip to the library in the city, to connect with two trains and one tram without low entry. To add insult to injury, the lift in the railway station was out of order, so Mac and I jerked our way up all those stairs. As this library rebinds all its books in what amounts to armor plate, this was not a good day.

Not surprisingly, I ended up with bursitis in my right shoulder.

Painful, inconvenient, and altogether too long lasting. But I remembered seeing an ad for a shopping cart that one pushes, rather than pulls. Surf the Internet, and there was the perfect solution – push or pull, and with swivel wheels. Not too common, those wheels. And then I began musing on these new construction or mechanical solutions: swivel wheels on virtually all prams and strollers nowadays and the aforementioned low-entry transport. What I would like to know is this: why are these only available nowadays? No new research and development was necessary, certainly, to figure out that the entry can be at platform level and people can sit on top of the train and bus wheels rather than the other way around. And haven’t swivel wheels been around for a very long time?

My new cart should arrive soon, and my shoulder will appreciate it. Faithful Mac will go to a friend of mine, and I am musing about a name for his successor. Then I will make another purchase – an electronic reader so as to cut down on those library hauls. I prefer reading an actual printed book, but my apartment would be jam-packed if I bought all the books I read. Not that that would be a problem, actually, as I would be in the poorhouse, having spent all my money on printed matter. I’m looking into online libraries with e-books. I will miss Mac and printed books, but I am looking forward to these new possibilities.

See what I mean? There is always a challenge…and always a solution.

From Farm but not to Fork

Food waste everywhere

Thanks to my sister-in-law, I am getting back to this poor neglected blog. This summer I have been involved with the PowerPoint presentation on Food Waste that I mentioned in "Little Table, Set Yourself. What I have learned is so compelling that I want to share it with you.

Food waste in the world apparently amounts to ca. 40% of all the

food grown. Before getting into the causes of this appalling situation, let’s look at what it means. Some billion people in the world are undernourished; many of these are actually starving. Morally and practically, we cannot afford to waste food. This is particularly true when one considers that although there is enough food now to feed the world were it better distributed, this will not be the case in 40-50 years, with 2 billion more mouths to feed and a growing middle class that will demand more resource-intensive foodstuffs like meat.


Then there is the fact that it is not only food that is being wasted. Agriculture uses more than ¾ of all the fresh water used in the world, and there are the other inputs as well: fertilizer, fuel, packaging, storage etc. Farming emits carbon dioxide and landfills emit methane, two greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming.

Even more appalling is the fact that the causes of this miserable situation in the developing countries and those in the developed world can hardly be more different. The developing countries can be said to lack: protection from the weather, decent transportation, infrastructure, good management. Those producing a cash crop lack a guaranteed wage to protect them from the vagaries of the world market.Contrast this plethora of needs with a summation of the causes in

the developed world: extravagant and wasteful lifestyle. The developed countries grow something like 4 times as much food as they need, believe it or not, and immediately one asks where it all goes? Rather little goes to food programs to feed the needy at home and abroad, the rest is flogged by the food industry on all fronts.  Overfilled grocery shelves, super-size packages, two-for-one offers, snack food available on every corner; all mean constant noshing and buying too much. Eating too much also, of course, with obesity becoming an international epidemic.


Then there is the demand for perfect produce, perfect in appearance only; the taste may be essentially like wet sawdust. A perfect carrot is not a crooked carrot, a perfect tomato is one that fits the packaging, rather than the other way around. Bread must be sold the day it is baked and the baker’s shelves must be filled with every type of bread until closing time – clearly a recipe for a lot of wasted bread.

Well known is the fact that portion sizes have gotten bigger over the years. Large is now essentially small, having been overtaken by extra-large and jumbo and supersize. Even dinner plates are larger than they were 40 years ago. Most dangerous perhaps are all-you-can-eat buffets in restaurants, where the eye is larger than the stomach and food is left on the plate.
A few more shocking statistics: In the US food waste is now 50% greater than it was in the ‘70s, food waste dwarfs other waste categories and eliminating food waste would be the equivalent in environmental protection of taking 25% cars off the road.

It is clear that a cultural sea change is necessary in the developed

world. “Stop wasting food!” applies to all of us consumers. We need to regard food with the enjoyment and respect it deserves, care more about taste than appearance and value quality over quantity.


A big step in the right direction has been taken by the large supermarket chain Intermarché in France. Imperfect produce is purchased from the farmer and sold as “inglorious vegetables and fruits” at a 30% discount in the shops. A hugely successful marketing campaign has featured posters with one imperfect fruit or veggie pictured on each and a description underneath. The “failed lemon” is one and others are, for example, the “disfigured eggplant” and my favorite, the “unfortunate clementine”. New shoppers are arriving in droves, a boon for the shop as well as the farmer who can sell the imperfect produce rather than throwing it away and of course the consumer, who benefits from the large discount.

Imagination plays a large part in reeducating spoiled consumers.

Some restaurants in such diverse countries as the UK, Saudi Arabia and Denmark are fining customers who do not finish everything on their plate! Mother’s admonition raised to a new level. Tesco plans to print food info on shopping bags. The media have gotten into the act with effective articles and TV programs.

Finally, it will be necessary to alter the subsidy structure in many countries. In the US, corn is subsidized and finds its way into a multitude of foodstuffs, many of them unhealthy. Corn gobbles up a great deal of fertilizer and water, and of course uses land that could be used for growing healthier vegetables or as grassland.

Hardly anything could be a more worthwhile challenge than reforming the food system. We all have a part to play – you too!