This beep is bananas b-a-n-a-n-a-s

If you have never looked in a store dumpster you should--it is very educational. It is amazing the amount of food that America wastes! I can't name sources, but I once heard that 30% of food in America goes to waste. This is one area in our country that consumption needs to be optimized.

Someone I know peeped in a dumpster recently, ahem, and told me about the mass amounts of bananas she and her husband saw that had been thrown out. Everyone in the midwest knows that overripe bananas make amazing baked goods. Why the waste?

Lara Martinson-Burrell made an impact on me when she said that she never buys bananas that are not fair trade--unless a store has a bunch of overripe ones that are going to get thrown out. The banana industry has wreaked havoc on some beautiful countries. Destroying forests and land, displacing local populations and more (see banana link).

http://www.bananalink.org.uk/content/view/77/37/lang,en/

There are many causes out there. We all have to choose which ones we want to focus on. Personally, I buy bananas once in a while. If we are at the gas station one of the little ones is hungry I will grab a banana or an apple. I am aware of the banana struggle, however, and seeing bananas in a dumpster gets me thinking. All of those resources and fossil fuels spent to transport those bananas here. All of those people the banana trade has effected, and those bananas end up in an Aldi's dumpster--ouch.