Stewardship and Waste

The New York Times ran an article on Sunday talking about how much food is wasted in this country - a staggering 25% of food available for consumption in this country gets thrown away.  There is similarly a tremendous amount of water waste in this country.  And both of these in a world where people die from lack of food and water. 

My thoughts on this are conveyed at greater length here.  I appreciate that it is hard politically to gain traction around issues of food and water waste.  But it shouldn't be hard to gain traction among those who take seriously principles of Catholic Social Thought.  What kind of stewards of the good of the earth are we being? And how seriously are we taking the principle of the universal destination of goods?  As I conclude in my other post on this issue: "If we truly recognize that all we have is gift from our loving God, we will think more about how we use what we have been given.  And if we recognize that this gift from God is meant to benefit all, we will spend time thinking about what steps we can take (both individually and communally) to address the fact that so many lack so much of what we take for granted."