Search Results for: food waste
Food waste: A global problem
Some 30-50% of food produced globally is never eaten. So reports a recent study by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, an independent UK-based engineering society with a focus on energy and environment. [Read more…] about Food waste: A global problem
Fast, cheap, and wasteful: Americans and food
A past Earth Wise segment explored global food waste: worldwide some 30-50% of food produced is never eaten. This figure includes inefficiencies in harvesting, storage, and transport, among other things. [Read more…] about Fast, cheap, and wasteful: Americans and food
Plastic food packaging
Reducing the use of plastic is an important environmental goal. Plastic is made from fossil fuels and plastic pollutes the land and the oceans. It is estimated that 40% of plastic waste comes from packaging. Plastic packaging is extremely common in the supermarket and there is a growing desire to reduce its use. But it isn’t that easy.
Plastic packaging works well to slow the decay of vegetables and fruit. Its use results in less produce being tossed into the garbage, where it creates almost 60% of landfill methane emissions. In fact, food is the most common material in landfills. The average American family of four spends $1,500 a year on food that ends up uneaten and nearly half of all household food waste is fruits and vegetables.
Products like bagged salads, berries in plastic clamshells, and plastic sealed potatoes and cucumbers are popular with shoppers because they stay fresh longer. They are popular with grocers because the items don’t have to be weighed. But all these things result in plastic waste. It is a tradeoff that is difficult to make between food quality and safety vs. the environmental harm caused by plastic.
There are a variety of alternatives to plastic packaging of food that are being explored. They range from biodegradable, organic coatings that can take the place of plastic films, to cardboard and paper produce packaging.
But practically, there is yet no affordable and biodegradable plastic alternative that keeps fruits and vegetables safe and fresh. Solving the food packaging problem is not easy.
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So Much Produce Comes in Plastic. Is There a Better Way?
Photo, posted July 1, 2007, courtesy of Brian via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
How to reduce pollution from food production
Present in animal manure and synthetic fertilizers, nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plant growth and is a critical input to enhance agricultural productivity on farms around the world. But excessive and inefficient use of this nutrient is widespread. In fact, up to 80% of it leaks into the environment, mostly in various polluting forms of nitrogen: ammonia and nitrogen oxides (which are harmful air pollutants), nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas), and nitrate (which affects water quality).
A new report prepared for the United Nations has put forth some solutions to greatly reduce nitrogen pollution from agriculture in Europe. A group of researchers coordinated by the U.K. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the European Commission, the Copenhagen Business School, and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment of The Netherlands produced the report.
In it, the research team puts forth its recipe to reduce nitrogen pollution in Europe. The report’s ingredients include:
- Reducing by 50% the average European meat and dairy consumption
- More efficient fertilizer application and manure storage
- Reducing food production demand by reducing food waste by retailers and consumers
- Better wastewater treatment to capture nitrogen from sewage
- Adopting policies addressing food production and consumption to transition them towards more sustainable systems
Taking action to reduce nitrogen pollution will require a holistic approach involving farmers, policymakers, retailers, water companies, and individuals.
Do Europeans have an appetite for change?
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Scientists provide recipe to halve pollution from food production
Photo, posted March 10, 2022, courtesy of USDA NRCS Montana via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Energy From Fruit Waste | Earth Wise
In the Back to the Future films, Doc Brown ran his DeLorean time machine on food scraps. It was a fun bit of science fiction. But researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Canada are investigating the potential for using food waste to generate power.
Food waste is not a candidate to replace solar or wind power, but it could be a source of energy for powering fuel cells. As it is, food waste represents a sustainability challenge because of its detrimental impacts on the economy and the environment. Organic waste represents a significant fraction of the material in landfills and contributes to methane production, air pollution, and other harmful pollutants.
The UBC researchers focused on fruit waste, which is abundantly available in agricultural regions. They have devised microbial fuel cells that convert fruit waste into electrical energy using an anaerobic anode compartment. That is a chamber in which anaerobic microbes – ones that don’t need oxygen – utilize the organic matter to convert it into energy. The microbes consume the fruit waste and produce water while generating bioelectricity.
It is not like the Back to the Future time machine where you can just toss in scraps of whatever is on hand. Different types of fruits provide different results when used in the microbial fuel cell. The process works best when the food waste is separated and ground into small particles. There is a long way to go before the technology could produce bioenergy on a commercial scale, but there is considerable potential for doing something useful with something that is currently worthless.
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UBCO researchers aim to energize fruit waste
Photo, posted July 24, 2011, courtesy of Andrew Girdwood via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Who Can Solve The Plastic Waste Problem? | Earth Wise
Plastic packaging waste is a global problem. It collects in the oceans, breaks down into microplastics, which are consumed by fish and in turn by people who eat the fish. Only 14.5% of U.S. plastic waste is recycled. Most of it ends up in landfills, where is remains undegraded for hundreds of years.
A new international study explored the global patterns of plastic packaging waste. The study found that three countries – the U.S., Brazil, and China – are the top suppliers of waste. In terms of supply, the Americas generate 41% of the world’s production of plastic waste, Europe 24%, and Asia 21%.
That’s the plastics supply. As far as the consumers actually creating waste are concerned, the Americas represent 36% of the world’s packaging consumption, Asia 26%, and Europe 23%.
Packaging high-protein food such as meat, fish, and dairy is a major contributor to the waste problem. Plastic for this purpose is hard to replace and international exports exacerbate the problem, accounting for about 25% of plastic packaging waste.
International agreements typically focus on restrictions and fees on production. But that mostly creates strong incentives to simply relocate polluting activities to developing countries, which is a zero-sum game. There need to be incentives for consumers to reduce plastic use such as taxes on waste management, refunds on returning bottles, single-use plastic bans, and so on.
Who can solve the plastic waste problem? Everyone along the supply chain as well as the final consumers have to be part of the solution for reducing plastic waste.
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Producers and consumers must share burden of global plastic packaging waste
Photo, posted March 29, 2022, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Sand From Mining Waste | Earth Wise
The natural resources people use the most are air and water. It may come as a surprise that in third place is sand. Sand is used to make glass, computer chips, toothpaste, cosmetics, food, wine, paper, paint, plastics, and more. It is estimated that 50 billion tons of sand are used each year.
Concrete is 10% cement, 15% water, and 75% sand. The concrete required to build a house takes on average 200 tons of sand, a hospital uses 3,000 tons, and a mile of a highway requires 15,000 tons.
One would think that there is no shortage of sand, but we are using it up faster than the planet can make it and the extraction of sand from seas, rivers, beaches, and quarries has negative impacts on the environment and surrounding communities. For example, removing sand leads to erosion in riverbanks, significantly increasing the risk of flooding in some places.
A potential strategy to reduce the impact of extracting sand to meet society’s growing need for is also a strategy for helping to reduce the production of mineral mining waste, which is the largest waste stream on the planet. Mining produces between 33 and 66 billion tons of waste material each year.
A new study by researchers in Switzerland and Australia looked at the potential for using mining waste as a source of so-called ore-sand. Sand-like material left over from mining operations could be used for many current applications for sand. Separating and repurposing these materials before they are added to the waste stream would not only reduce the volume of waste being generated by mining operations but would also create a responsible new source of sand.
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Solution to world’s largest waste stream: Make sand
Photo, posted October 22, 2005, courtesy of Alan via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Takeout Food And Ocean Litter | Earth Wise
The Covid-19 pandemic saw most of us making use of take-out or delivery services as our only access to restaurant food. It was a valuable link to normal life. But unfortunately, the packaging of takeout food is a major contributor to the global plastic waste problem that isn’t going to disappear just because people are returning to eating in restaurants.
A new analysis of more than 12 million items by UK researchers published in the journal Nature Sustainability has found that the majority of ocean litter collected around the world is in the form of takeout food items: bags, wrappers, containers, straws and cutlery, aluminum cans, and plastic and glass bottles. Eighty percent of all the items surveyed were made of plastic.
Wrappers and packaging tended to concentrate along coasts, gathering on the shore and the sea floor. Takeout trash was rarer in the open ocean. In those areas, fishing debris accounted for half of the litter.
The authors of the study argue that efforts to curb plastic waste should prioritize takeout food and beverage containers. They recommend that avoidable takeout items, like single-use plastic bags, should be replaced with non-plastic and biodegradable materials. The authors also recommended making plastic producers responsible for the collection and disposal of plastic products.
As of July 1, the European Union has banned the 10 most common plastic and Stryofoam products found on European beaches. The EU is also establishing an active European market for recycled plastics based on the principles of extended producer responsibility.
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Takeout Food and Drink Containers Account for Bulk of Ocean Litter
Photo, posted September 14, 2009, courtesy of Susan White/USFWS via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Livestock And Sustainable Food Systems | Earth Wise
Animal-based agriculture has endured a great deal of criticism with regard to its contributions to climate change and its other environmental impacts. But its contributions to a sustainable food system are by no means all bad. In fact, livestock play important roles in sustainable, regenerative agro-food systems.
Animals’ natural biological processes enable them to consume plant and food residues that are either indigestible by humans, unpalatable to people, or are no longer sellable for various reasons, all referred to as IUUB biomass. There are many examples.
One dairy farm receives daily deliveries of apple waste from a processing facility that supplies apple slices for school lunches. Another local dairy gets three truckloads of vegetable and fruit discards, along with expired bread products, each week. No longer useful for consumers, these foodstuffs become feed for cattle rather than going to a landfill. Even the booming market for plant-based foods like artificial meat for consumers has generated a surge of processing byproducts that can be consumed by livestock.
On a national scale, livestock are consuming millions of pounds of otherwise unusable IUUB created in the production of products like soybean and canola oils, orange juice, ethanol, and more.
While the livestock industry needs to keep working to minimize its environmental impact and there are many reasons to eat less meat, livestock farming is an integral part of our agro-food systems. Farmers are embracing techniques to produce meat, milk and eggs as efficiently and sustainably as possible, minimizing agriculture’s climate-contributing footprint in the process.
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Amazing Cows Hold Promise in Pioneering Sustainable Food Systems
Photo, posted May 11, 2019, courtesy of Theo Stikkelman via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Supermarkets And Zero-Waste
There are about 38,000 supermarkets in the United States alone and they are responsible for vast quantities of waste in the form of single-use plastic bags, plastic containers that store food products, and food waste as well. Globally, over 80% of poll respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment. Responding to this message, markets are starting to make changes.
In a number of places, there are now markets that are package-free. The Nada grocery store in Vancouver and Precycle in Brooklyn are examples of zero waste grocery stores. Websites like Litterless provide online help for customers trying to find packaging-free grocery stores.
Markets are not only changing their packaging, they are using artificial intelligence to develop more sustainable production processes and seeking other ways to reduce waste.
On average, Americans throw away over 300 plastic bags a year, but an increasing number of grocery retailers are making commitments to more sustainable, plastic-free options. It isn’t just small stores either. Grocery giant Kroger plans to eliminate plastic bags in its stores by 2025. When that happens, it means that 6 billion plastic bags will no longer be distributed. Big Y stores will fully transition to reusable bags by next year. More and more cities and states are banning or imposing fees on plastic bags.
An interesting statistic shows that the age group of Americans that is leading the adoption of reusable grocery bags is not millennials but in fact is people over 50. With multiple generations now indicating that they want shopping to be more sustainable, it is likely that supermarkets will strive to help make that happen.
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Why More Supermarkets Are Committing to Zero-Waste
Photo, posted March 4, 2013, courtesy of Dean Hochman via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Raw Wastewater On Farms