How to Spot a Westerner

So far we have eaten a total of only about six meals in our apartment, and this has been strictly relegated to some fruit, cereal, and sandwiches. Nonetheless, we still have managed to produce more trash than the rest of our apartment floor combined. It is rather humorous to see 4 trash bags for the whole floor sitting by the pickup location as we bring out our 5 bags.

I can't really explain how this occurs. Cearly we buy and consume more. Also, I assume we must be much more inefficient in our use and reuse of consumables. (We Americans love to throw things away!). For example, I am sure the local Chinese are better about reusing all platic bags they receive from the store. And I can tell just from walking down the supermarket aisle that they are much more efficient when it comes to food. Every piece of a fish is packaged and sold in some way, shape, or form, as food or medicine or for some other use (head, scales, bones and all). Okay the packaging is wishful thinking- much of the parts are just dumped into big bins and sold openly, but I prefer to skip those aisles of the supermarket. Anyhow, a Korean woman always used to tell a co-worker of mine, "You Americans waste so much fish!" The same thing goes for chicken- apparently every part can be eaten. (what's in your Chicken McNuggets today?) In fact, the Chinese prefer chicken feet so much that they cannot support the delicacy based only on internal production. The US is now the number one supplier of chicken feet to the Chinese population. The majority of their chicken feet are shipped over from the US as remains from our chicken industry and then sold as food. I guess its a symbiotic relationship... just as long as they don't mind our excess of trash :)