My Grandma always said, "What you waste, you'll want for"

I'm sure we all see things wasted on a daily basis. Throwing away good food is just like throwing away money. As much as food costs now, it really is! For an example, I once saw a little girl throw away two perfectly good pieces of bread before her parent picked her up from a sleepover b/c she felt she couldn't eat them before her mom got there. I found the bread in the trash after she left. I got them, dried them out, and fed them to the birds.

At what point do we teach our children that waste hurts? One way our waste as a nation hurts the earth is polluting and by using large parcels of the earth for landfills that are full of toxic waste that aren't even safe to build houses on later. How many things are thrown away each day that could be recycled, repaired, or used by someone else? Our community dump doesn't allow people to take things they could use home. My idea of a perfect "dump" isn't a dump at all, but a drop-off that would allow people to take what they can use home, kind of like a swap-meet, or a free flea market.

Another way that waste hurts is by using natural resources in unwise ways that prevent others from using them wisely. What do we want left for our children and grand-children? Memories of what natural resources used to be? Beautiful wild animals that can only exist in zoos? A world where rainforests and their native inhabitants live only in pictures? Not a happy thing to look forward to, is it? How many of us truly try to cut down on waste each day? Wasted electricity, water, fuel, money, resources... Most of us could be so much wiser with our resources. Food for thought.