As I stepped into the shower this morning, I was struck by the humble but profoundly medicinal blessing of cold water before it warms. That moment before comfort arrives—when the cold makes me breathe in sharply, contract, and awaken—is a full-body reminder of what it means to be truly alive. The shock of it resets my nervous system, pulling me back from the numbing edge of modern convenience and restoring my awareness. It’s a jolt into presence made possible by a willingness to feel, which is perhaps where all healing begins.

And yet, I asked myself, how often do people let that blessing simply pour down the drain? The question led me into a wider reflection on our culture of waste.

As a vegan, my first thought was of Dotsie Bausch’s efforts to end government-funded milk programs in schools. So much of this subsidized milk ends up being poured down the drain by students who either can’t drink it or don’t want it. No matter: the dairy industry still profits, which is, after all, the primary purpose of the program. Meanwhile, the calves—the babies—for whom the milk was originally intended, are discarded by the industry like waste, their existence a mere by-product of a system driven by demonically perverse values. Sadly, we are conditioned by such values to see neither the waste nor the violence inherent in these practices.

No waste is greater than the waste hidden in our food systems. It takes thirty-nine pounds of plant foods to produce one pound of animal food, and the amount of water used to raise animals for food is prodigious—no running tap or long shower could ever compete. And yet, despite the staggering cost to the planet, the animals, and our own health, we see meat and dairy as standard, everyday commodities, to be consumed without guilt or even so much as a thought.

To help with the denial process, we outsource much of our waste—ship it across oceans to be “cleaned” by hands in lands already burdened with the trauma of colonization. We toss out shirts made by underpaid workers and call it fashion. We pollute in one place in order to consume more in another.

As we near Father’s Day, I remember my dad, an old-school, waste-not-want-not man who taught me to shut the lights off, not to run the water while brushing my teeth, and to use what I have fully before seeking to acquire more. These lessons were not just about thrift; they were about respect: Respect for the earth, for the energy possessed by every object, and for the labor—often invisible—that produced it for us.

My father also taught me from an early age the spiritual value of nature, whose everyday and profound wonders he never tired of observing. Which leads me to reflect on another, more subtle but equally insidious form of wastefulness characteristic of our culture. Sadly, its habit is often formed in childhood, during the sacred first seven years of life. As Captain Paul Watson has wisely observed, we are obsessed in this culture with balls and pucks, and we are keen to cultivate that same obsession in our children. Rarely do we pause—or encourage our children to pause—in the urgent pursuit of balls and pucks in order to listen to the shimmering leaves or for the return of frogs in spring. In this way we waste the days and years in superficial diversion, disconnected from nature. This is a spiritual waste, a wasting of the soul, in which curiosity is replaced by consumption, and wonder is degraded to winning.

So what are we to do in a world that glorifies waste when it isn’t hiding it?

We come back.
Back to the garden.
One creative action at a time.

We stop wasting our words. We stop wasting our silence. We pause. We prune. We listen. We ask not what we can get, but what we can give. Not what we can consume, but what we can grow.

During my own quiet morning, I ask: how can I release waste?

Waste of words that harm.
Waste of thoughts that drain.
Waste of time spent out of alignment.
Waste of energy chasing what does not matter.
Waste of resources that are not mine to squander.

I begin where I am. I clean up my own backyard. And in doing so, I hold the door open for possibility—not just for myself, but for us all. Because it always begins with one step, one morning, one breath at a time.

Waste not. Want not.

And in that return to simplicity, we find something the world cannot afford to waste—

The possibility of a soul in harmony with the Earth.

Join Us

Please join us on Wednesday, Jun 11, in the Convergence room at 8-9 am Pacific time, for our discussion on the International Calf and Cow Mother’s Day with our guest, Renee King-Sonnen, co-founder of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary. We will also be meeting in the evening among ourselves at 5:30-6:30 pm Pacific time in the Convergence room.

With Much Compassion,
Tami Hay for MVG
Million Vegan Grandmothers