I agree with every word. I abhor wastage of food but, as PP said, also wastage of other items like household goods, clothing etc. I would never police other people who don’t share my view, and I don’t particularly judge them, but I do wish more people could be even a little bit more thoughtful about it.
I’m not entirely sure why I feel so strongly about it, I did have an impoverished upbringing though. There was definitely minimal wastage in our house whether it be food, or socks that got darned, or trousers that got patched, and everything was handed down - more than once, etc. My mother even learned things like basic diy skills in order to fix things that got broken. EG she bought a soldering iron, a sewing machine, had tools that other mothers of my peer’s generation just didn’t own, and didn’t dream of owning (all braved for veeeery slowly and all second hand, by saving a few pence a week out of her extremely tight budget - she had different marked up white envelopes that she’d put a pound coin in when she could) Skills were learnt at the library by borrowing the relative books (she borrowed a book on car maintenance for a while and managed to keep our ancient rust bucket going longer than was decent 😂). This is going back 40 years to the early 1980s. I knew we were different to other families in my friendship group, and though it didn’t make me isolated, it easily could have done. I hated it. I’ll never forget the shame of starting my (selective, luckily social mobility was a benefit of the selective system for me) secondary school, in my home made uniform. Every other girl had the hideous, uniform-shop bought, baggy, wide tri-coloured blouse and below knee length sludgey coloured A-line skirt. I had my mum’s homemade, fitted, striped blouse and grey ra-ra skirt. It actually made me wildly popular, they all wanted her to make theirs😂! But I didn’t want to be different. And so, when I left school, and home, at sixteen and was first in full time, paid work (I couldn’t afford to stay in education even if I wanted to because I had to leave home), I rejected that way of life and became quite wasteful and extravagant (well, as far as I could afford to). I got in to a lot of credit card debt as I’d just buy and buy and buy stuff I didn’t really want or need. I look back on that now as appalling (though I clearly had unresolved issues, so forgive myself😉). But I obviously never really forgot what it was like as a child because I have definitely slowly got back to it. When it comes to non wastage of food, I’m gold standard! But it takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to effectively plan and cook, and I have a lot of cooking experience and knowledge from my younger days, that many people might not have. Becoming vegetarian as a family really helped with that too, though sometimes I think vegetarian cooking is more labour intensive, and I do cook everything from scratch and batch cook (no ready prepped veg etc). I reuse, repurpose or recycle everything I possibly can, and try to buy less in general. Clothes are usually worn til they fall apart, though I have good quality clothes that last ages because I’m lucky enough to be able to afford them in the first place I suppose. Same with furniture and the like, I buy things with the intention of them lasting a lifetime or as near as, but that not that doesn’t come cheap. Cars (we need more than one as a family) are bought outright and kept til they start falling apart (or get too expensive to fix each MOT). Maybe, for me anyway, non wastage is a by product of being privileged enough to be able buy quality things in the first place, plus a little bit of knowledge and desire to minimise my impact on the world. So, to summarise, for me it may have started as a living on the breadline thing but now it’s more that I can afford to have little waste, because I can afford the good quality things in the first place and so, to not live that way, would seem appalling to me.