Welcome to my blog! I am a 5th-year commerce student studying General Business Management and International Business at Sauder School of Business.
My sustainability journey began when I was in middle school. I followed my mom to Superstore to help her with grocery shopping. When we arrived at the Meat & Poultry section, my mom gave me the choice to choose the type of meat. I decided on the specific meat type and asked for 750g of the beef. What happened next was shocking. The employee sliced some amount of the beef, weighed the sliced meat on the electronic scale (which read over 750g), took some meat off the scale to match it to 750g and then threw out the excess slices. These were the train of thoughts that followed:
“What? Just throw away the untouched, clean, tasty food?”
“Those starving children I saw on TV with exposed rib cages, bloated stomach, and scared eyes…”
“How much food are they throwing away every day? Every month? Every year?”
“They are losing so much money. They could have just gave me the extra slices for free…”
Yes – in the end, my thoughts trailed off to personal greed but the fact that there is perfectly edible food going into trash angered me, puzzled me, and saddened me.
What I witnessed as a middle school kid was probably just a small part of many other social problems that are happening around the world. I feel a sense of duty to improve these opportunities. I am confident that pursing this passion with education and interaction with like-minded individuals will ultimately lead to actions and changes. I hope that by sharing sustainable articles with you, we will become more aware of our communities and tackle those issues together as responsible citizens of Earth.
– Joseph Hong