I’m late to the game.
In 2005, the Japanese word mottainai became a slogan for environmental protection thanks to Wangari Maathai. But the word itself dates back to the 13th century. In contemporary Japanese, mottainai is most commonly used when something is discarded needlessly, with a sense of shame. It sits on top of generations of thinking, having become shorthand for resourcefulness and respect.
Mottainai draws on tenets of Shinto, which recognizes a spirit in every object and being. To simply throw something away can feel almost sacrilegious. We don’t have a word or phrase in English for that. “What a waste” comes close, but it carries more of a sigh or a tsk tsk than a sense of guilt. And yet there are traces of mottainai in American culture—our grandparents or great-grandparents who lived through scarcity and hardship, when wasting was unthinkable.
In the years since, we’ve experienced abundance. We now have more “stuff” than we can handle, all at the touch of a button. We’ve made it so easy and commonplace to throw things away that suggesting an alternative can feel old-fashioned or out of touch.
And yet, deep down, most people don’t feel great about throwing food away. Is it because our grandparents told us it was wrong? Or is it something deeper—that we feel there is value embedded in the food, something that doesn’t belong in the trash?
I spend most days (ok, every day) thinking about how to tap into this feeling. Too bad we can’t just invent a word and expect it to stick. Instead, we need to elevate the people making better choices and build the norms that reinforce them. We need the person at the buffet line taking only what they can eat, instead of piling up a plate to avoid going back for seconds. We need the restaurant operator noticing when too many uneaten fries come back to the kitchen and shrinking that portion size next time. And we need the school foodservice director reminding staff that kids don’t actually have to take milk so there isn’t a pile of unopened drinks in the trash.
And we need you.
We need you, tonight, to open your fridge and make a meal out of what’s already there. To pause at the store before you reach for more than you know you’ll use. To raise your hand at the next city council meeting when they ask if anyone wants food scrap collection at the curb.
Over time, those actions can build a culture that spawns a word—one that instantly captures what we already know: food, and everything that goes into it, is too important to waste. Until then, it starts with a pause, and choosing to not throw it away.
