Poverty? Waste? So Subjective

One of the biggest turning points during this assignment was evaluating and defining what waste, poverty, or hunger really were. Not just the broad, dictionary definition that’s thrown around everywhere. Every group kept throwing around numerous dissimilar statistics about how many people are experiencing hunger and poverty, I couldn’t help but think of how each group had a different idea in mind about the extent of poverty. Does it vary on their income? Standard of living? Whether or not they have a roof over their head? Beggars? The answer could be all or none of the above. Because such broad terms are subjective to the person asking the question. The person asking the question is allowed to set a guideline to who can be considered poor, or hungry. The best thing is, there is no right or wrong answer, just like there was no wrong statistic. We all  just failed to define the word properly.

 

Everyone in my class had agreed that waste was basically excess unwanted, invaluable leftover materials disposed that had no use. I, on the other hand, took to pointing out the fact that just because we, as humans didn’t need the food waste, that its existence on Earth was irrelevant. However, “one man’s trash is another’s treasure.” Pigs, while rare animals in Cairo as of 2009,  are great food waste consumers. The zabaleen in Cairo were efficiently managing to dispose of the waste by feeding the pigs and greatly reducing the numbers, thus concluding that it wasn’t waste after all. In fact, it was essential in order for theses animals to thrive. From there, I took to always evaluate if there were any benefits to a situation before deeming it completely unprofitable or defunct.

The thing I learned most after this weeks activities and guest speaker, is before trying to come up with solutions, the bulk of solving any problem/solution is taking the time to sincerely identifying and defining the specific boundaries/limitations of that target. Just like our guest speaker from the Egyptian Food Bank also took to pointing out that people have to fulfill a certain criteria in order to be eligible of her services.

I’m very content with what we’ve been doing in class lately, but I wouldn’t mind increasing the in class, on spot, creativity exercises that stimulate our brain and challenge our mindsets. My favorite activity in this class was the paper airplane exercise. Rather than just brainstorming for problems we won’t be able to solve (like the overhead bins one), I want to actually experiment and solve a small minor problem.