I started training for my new position on Monday at a Walmart about 30 miles from my home store. So far the training has gone well but there is one thing that completely upsets me. It’s not anything to do with a company policy or the store itself. It has to do with something I’ve been seeing.

Today, which was the second day of “food stamp day” for our store, I had to throw out close to $150 worth of meat that a customer had left in their cart. I guess often people will load up on expensive items only to get to the register and realize that either they don’t have enough food stamp money or that the item is not eligible to be purchased with the food stamps (by the way this is not an affront to people who need food stamps, just those who abuse them).

What really bothered me about this whole scenario is that I stood there while the customer loaded up their cart with really expensive items, carelessly throwing it in. About two hours later a cashier came back from the front with the cart full of all of the meat which had to be thrown out since we had no way of knowing how long it had been out and since it had left the meat area in the possession of a customer.

All I could think about as I threw it out was how many people could benefit from this food. I then thought to myself how many times this scenario is repeated each day at food stores and even homes all over our world. It’s really made me begin to think about my own home and how much food I myself waste.

Genesis 2:15 says “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” We are definitely not taking care of our earth. The food that we throw out, both plant and animal, is atrocious. Instead of becoming stewards of this earth we’ve been given, we’ve become abusers ravaging and taking what isn’t ours. As a result it’s left this world in a pretty sorry state.

Not just food but natural resources. Look what happened with the well in the Gulf. Even the wars that we fight are often over natural resources, people being abused so they can mine diamonds for the greedy, it happens more than we realize.

I think it’s time as a society that we all take a long, hard look at ourselves. But this will never happen as long as it’s all about us. That’s what’s gotten us here in the first place. Eventually, it’ll happen. When the resources run out or when something happens to make us step back and look at the world around us break of us of our self-centered nature, then maybe change can occur.

Instead of calling environmentalists “tree huggers” and “hippies”, it’s time we all try to lend a hand to make little changes in our own lives. In our homes, our schools, our workplaces, we can be the one who starts the changes that need to happen. The irony in all of this is, in time, our bodies will go back to where they came from, and we’ll be a part of this earth too.