With now finishing the second month of this course I’ve gained an appreciation for the use of interdisciplinary in everyday life and other classes. It has given me other perspectives for my learning and broadened my knowledge by letting me use other experiences from other classes.
This month’s case study of food has given me a perspective of how easy it is to waste food in everyday life. Even if you use everything that you purchase from the grocery store to cook or to create compost there is a huge amount of produce that is wasted by farming standards. Whether it be size, colour or any deformities incredible amounts of food gets wasted even before it arrives at the store. Once they are at the store tonnes of food is thrown away if they go past their “Sell by” date even if they are still good to eat. These foods could be given to shelters or sold for a lower price than food that is still ahead of the sell-by date.
I’ve attempted to engage with the reading by relating to my everyday life and putting the methods that they suggest into practice, such as using as much of the food purchased as possible and growing food in my backyard and using all of the of food produced. It is much less wasteful if you grow your own food as there are no standards for size and shape of it. They may look a little different, but will exactly the same. These standards exist as people are much pickier if they have to pay for it, but if someone has to put immense amounts of time and effort into something are must less likely to waste what the make.
The students that I’ve spoken to in our class usually share the same thoughts as me when it comes to food waste. They believe that we could do much better with how much food is thrown away by farms or stores similarly to me. They believe that the current state of our agricultural is not good enough and needs improvement as it’s incredibly wasteful and harmful to the environment and the planet. Eventually, it will not be enough to sustain our population growth and we will not be able to cope with the necessary changes. We are already seeing that with famines across Africa and the Middle East in places where they do not have the opportunity of constantly stocked shelves. We need to share our mass amounts of food and not have so much go to waste.
With creating an ePortfolio it’s given me the opportunity to document my progression throughout the course and other courses I’ve taken and lets me reflect on my past opinions and thoughts. Having the portfolio will give me the opportunity to look back on my past years at Capilano in the future and show me my development as a student to see how I’ve progressed. I’m looking forward to seeing how the ePortfolio affects my perspective of my education and how I reflect on it in the future.