First of all, great to hear you again, Muir. Second, you are not old!!! Trust me on that. Just because you are surrounded by people who are younger doesn't make you old.
Mur can't be getting old! I think she's only a few months wiser than I am, and in a few weeks I'll be reaching my 22nd 19th Birthday.
As for waste... When I was young - Er... Young-er that is - milk came in glass bottles. When you used up all the milk, you rinsed out the bottle and sent it back to the dairy to be filled up with milk again.
Now milk comes in a carton, and when it's empty, you have to throw it in a landfill. At least, where I live, the recyclable waste collection won't take it.
Is it any wonder people waste things like food packaging under those circumstances?
And the question of food stockpiles is one that keeps cropping up in conversations here in the UK, even if it isn't considered newsworthy these days.
Sure, you need a surplus to get you through the lean times. But sometimes, that surplus is just ridiculous!
Given the hoarding and waste of the first world, I suppose The Warlord's comment that Civilisation is about waste might seem like a reasonable hypothesis, except that, like so many third world leaders, having so exactly identified one of the flaws of our civilisation, he then sets out to specifically adopt that one trait. Hoarding and wasting.