Is Convenience the Enemy of Sustainability?

Sometimes I wonder about the extent to which we have become dependent on "convenience items" and "convenience services" to the degree that it could even be argued that we're addicted to them.

There's no doubt that convenience items are important to a great many people. And I definitely understand their reason for existing. After all it seems like we have less and less time to do things, and more and more things we need to accomplish in the available time.

As such, it only makes sense to "farm out" a lot of the things that end up stealing time that we need for something else.

I watch our own adult kids - now in their early and mid-thirties - use all manners of convenience assists... meaning everything from getting most of their meals brought in by Doordash or Uber Eats to using a variety of services to do all manners of things for them.

Aside from the fact that using all these services quickly adds up to a lot of money, it also tends to add up to a lot of waste. And that's where I start worrying about sustainability.

Getting back to the kids, not only do they end up with a veritable ocean of packing materials that end up either in recycling or trash, they end up throwing away half the food because it wasn't really the amount they wanted and the bits they saved as leftovers ended up rotting in the fridge because they ordered a new set of dinners the following day.

I look at all that, and it's hardly a sustainable sort of process.

But here's the thing: sustainability tends to be a somewhat slow process... and it's not necessarily the cheapest one either! But is that at odds with our modern way of life... or is it more of a warning sign that we're overextending ourselves in an unhealthy manner?

Peripherally related...

One of the things that impressed me about the last time we were in Denmark, was the fact that most organic products weren't any more expensive than "regular" products.

I mentioned this to my cousin - who had been working at the Danish Ministry of Agriculture for many years - and he pointed out that a part of the reason for why organics were now just the "natural choice" for most people was the fact that regulations had been made in such a way that it was highly advantageous for farmers to choose organic approaches.

And because of this advantage, the price of organic products on the supermarket shelves were roughly the same as regular products, and so anybody with a degree of interest in healthier foods, would naturally just buy the organics and so the demand was automatically passed forward, thereby sustaining organic farming.

As a point of reference, currently about 35% of Danes choose organic products "always" or "most of the time," while another 36% choose it "often" or "sometimes." For comparison, approximately 6% of food sales in the USA are organics.

What does organic farming in Denmark have to do with sustainability?

Maybe not a lot directly, but perhaps some of our woes are the result of just *having too much on our collective plates to be sustainable.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Friday!

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Created at 2023-11-17 00:35 PDT
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