Search Results for: food waste
Wasting food
Scientists have long been concerned about potential food shortages in a world facing climate change and a rapidly increasing population. [Read more…] about Wasting food
Sustainable New Year’s resolutions
Every year, millions of people around the world make resolutions to spark positive change in the new year. Popular resolutions include improving health and fitness, traveling more, spending less, and so on. With 2024 just around the corner, here are six resolution ideas to reduce our climate impact:
Shop More Sustainably. Choose eco-friendly brands and products with minimal environmental impact, including locally-produced goods and reusable items whenever possible.
Switch To Clean Energy. Purchase green power, install renewable energy systems to generate electricity, or switch to renewable resources for home and water heating and cooling needs.
Reduce Food Waste. Food waste is a significant global issue with environmental, economic, and social implications. In the U.S., an estimated 30-40% of the total food supply is never eaten. Meal plan and only shop for what you need. And freeze any leftovers.
Adopt A More Plant-Based Diet. Transition to a more plant-based diet in order to shrink the ecological footprint of food production. Resource-intensive animal-based foods like meat, dairy, and eggs are one of the chief contributors to climate change.
Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Transportation. Opt for eco-friendly transportation and energy-efficient practices in order to lower emissions. Examples include driving a battery-electric car and utilizing public transportation.
Get Involved In Conservation Advocacy. Support and engage in environmental causes, and help promote conservation and sustainable practices.
As we ring in the new year, let’s raise our glasses to a cleaner and greener 2024.
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Photo, posted August 3, 2018, courtesy of Ella Olsson via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Farming the frozen north
Agriculture is the primary cause of land-based biodiversity loss. As the global population grows, agricultural production needs to keep pace. Estimates are that production needs to double by 2050. How this can be accomplished without doing further harm to the environment and biodiversity is extremely challenging.
Climate change adds further complications to the challenge. As the climate warms in the middle latitudes, agricultural zones may need to shift northward to regions which have evolved to have more suitable climates. This represents a very real threat to the wilderness areas of Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia. These places represent a significant fraction of the world’s wilderness areas outside of Antarctica.
According to researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK, if the forces driving climate change are not diminished, over the next 40 years warming temperatures are expected to make more than 1 million square miles newly suitable for growing crops. As cropland goes barren in areas that have warmed too much, northern wilderness could be turned over to farming. The vital integrity of these valuable areas could be irreversibly lost.
The study, published in the journal Current Biology, also says that climate change will shrink the variety of crops that can be grown on 72% of the land that is currently farmed worldwide. Given this situation along with the rising global population, it is essential that land be used more efficiently. We can feed a larger population from the farmland we already have, but people need to reduce meat consumption, cut food waste, and grow crops suited to their local climate.
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Warming Could Make Northern Wilderness Ripe for Farming, Study Finds
Photo, posted September 7, 2016, courtesy of Scott via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
A billion pound problem
Nearly two billion pounds of pumpkins are grown each year in the U.S. But we actually don’t eat the vast majority of them. Instead, most pumpkins are carved or otherwise decorated, and placed on porches across the country during Halloween. But now that the holiday has come and gone, what happens to all those sagging masterpieces?
Simply put, we usually just throw them out. In the days after Halloween, as much as 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkin winds up in landfills. When left there to decompose, the pumpkins produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas that affects climate change by contributing to increased warming.
Here are some ways to keep pumpkins out of the landfills this year and make Halloween festivities more sustainable.
If the pumpkin is still in good shape, use the outer, meaty part of the pumpkin to make a fresh version of pumpkin puree. Pumpkin puree is a common ingredient in baked goods like muffins, breads, and pies, especially during this time of the year. The pumpkin seeds can also be scooped out, rinsed, and salted or spiced, and then baked in the oven, resulting in a delicious snack.
Pumpkins also have the potential to turn into great soil through composting. Pumpkins are just over 90% water, which help naturally add moisture to compost piles that need to be damp to effectively decompose food waste.
If eating or composting the pumpkins isn’t an option, consider donating them to a local farm. Farmers will often collect pumpkins as treats for their pigs, goats, and other animals.
The scariest part of Halloween shouldn’t be the waste.
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Say Boo to Landfills – Compost Your Pumpkin After Halloween!
Photo, posted November 4, 2010, courtesy of William Warby via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
An Indoor Farm In Upstate New York | Earth Wise
Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers, generally under controlled environments and using soilless farming techniques like hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. Vertical farms are housed in structures such as buildings, shipping containers, tunnels, and abandoned mineshafts.
The potential advantages of vertical farms are that they are very efficient in terms of the amount of land required to produce a given amount of crop, they are resistant to weather, and they allow crops to be produced in close proximity to where they will be used.
The vacant third floor of a building in downtown Glens Falls, New York is about to become the home of a small vertical farm. The facility will be used to hydroponically grow things like fresh basil, lettuce, and fruits to be used by nearby restaurants. In fact, the first floor of the building is a restaurant that will be a customer for the crops growing upstairs. Other local restaurants are likely to benefit as well.
Th pilot program is being funded by a grant from the Smart Cities Innovation Partnership that the city applied for in 2020. Glens Falls is partnering with Re-Nuble, a New York City-based renewability and sustainability firm. Apart from the vertical farm project, Re-Nuble also advises on reduction of food waste by composting and on the selection of energy-efficient equipment.
The pilot program will run for a year and the results will be used for scaling it up to a larger vertical farm. Vertical farms like these are not intended to replace conventional farms but can supplement the existing food stream and provide items that are hard to obtain during the year.
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Glens Falls is fitting a farm inside a downtown building
Photo, posted July 15, 2007, courtesy of Toshiyuki Imai via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Eating To Help The Planet | Earth Wise
Agriculture accounts for more carbon dioxide emissions than transportation. Producing our food is one of the largest contributors to climate change. Experts agree that the world cannot achieve net zero emission targets without changing our diets. Be that as it may, we still have to eat.
According to experts from Oxford University, there are things we as individuals can do to lower the impact of the food system on the climate.
There are three primary actions that would have the greatest impact: avoiding eating too much, cutting down on food waste, and reducing consumption of meat and dairy.
We all know that overeating is bad for our health, but it is also bad for the environment as it drives excess production and the emissions associated with it.
Food waste occurs across the supply chain but much of it is in the hands of consumers. Food waste costs us a lot of money and is associated with emissions that are ultimately unnecessary. The goal of the consumer should be to buy only the food one needs and to eat what one buys.
Meats, particularly from ruminant animals, result in the highest emissions per pound of food compared with vegetables, grains, and such. Some people have given up animal proteins entirely, but properly managed livestock are an important part of the agricultural ecosystem and provide valuable services including enhancing the carbon sequestering ability of grasslands. Nevertheless, it is important to reduce the global demand for meat and thereby prevent the need to clear more land for livestock and reduce emissions from meat animals. So, we should all eat less meat and dairy even if we don’t become vegetarians.
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How can we eat without cooking the planet?
Photo, posted September 17, 2017, courtesy of Ella Olsson via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Compost And Landfills | Earth Wise
Composting is popular as a way to keep solid waste out of landfills and many people turn much of their kitchen waste into rich soil amendments. Cities and towns across the country have composting programs that collect waste from residents to produce large quantities of compost rather than adding the waste to landfills. A new study from North Carolina State University looked into the environmental benefits of actually using compost at landfills.
Most municipal composting programs require that the compost they produce gets used “beneficially”. The new research shows that using compost as an alternative daily cover at landfills is competitive and often superior to the use of compost as a soil amendment in terms of its environmental benefits.
Landfills apply a layer of daily cover to reduce odors, reduce windblown debris, and keep vermin out of landfill waste. Federal regulations require six inches of soil as a daily cover.
Compost from food waste in particular is not always suitable for soil amendment in gardens and agricultural fields because it often contains broken glass and other contaminants.
The North Carolina State study looked at the environmental impact of using compost as daily cover in landfills compared with its use as a soil amendment. They looked at global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication (which is the amount of nutrients released to ground and surface water), cumulative energy demand, and the depletion of resources.
The study concluded that using compost as landfill daily cover is environmentally superior with regard to eutrophication, acidification, and global warming potential. On the other hand, soil amendment was better in terms of resource depletion and cumulative energy demand.
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Applying Compost to Landfills Could Have Environmental Benefits
Photo, posted April 22, 2008, courtesy of Alachua County via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Renewable Natural Gas
Small-scale biogas systems have collected methane from landfills, sewage plants, and farms for decades. Here in the US, biogas is finally catching up with modern techniques with the advent of third-party operators introducing more sophisticated technology to capture methane and pump it directly into pipelines.
Renewable methane or natural gas represents a significant mostly unexploited source of energy. Examples include the vast amounts methane generated by manure from some of the 2,300 hog farms in eastern North Carolina, biodigesters that can turn clusters of large California dairy farms into energy hubs, as well as diverting food waste from landfills and transforming it into vehicle and heating fuels.
According to a 2014 EPA study, the U.S. could support at least 13,000 biogas facilities, fed by manure, landfill gas, and biosolids from sewage treatment plants. Those facilities could produce over 650 billion cubic feet of biogas per year – enough renewable energy to power 3 million homes.
A study by the World Resources Institute estimated that the 50 million tons of organic waste sent to landfills or incinerated every year in the U.S. has the energy content of 6 billion gallons of diesel fuel, amounting to 15% of all diesel consumed by heavy-duty trucks and buses.
Utilizing all that biogas could help lower greenhouse gas emissions from some of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize – transportation, industry, and heating buildings. In addition, ramped up renewable gas could keep organic waste out of landfills and prevent manure runoff into rivers and water supplies.
Renewable natural gas could be the next big thing in green energy.
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Could Renewable Natural Gas Be the Next Big Thing in Green Energy?
Photo, posted June 19, 2013, courtesy of Alan Levine via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Polystyrene Foam
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to ban expanded polystyrene, the foam plastic used in food packaging, packing peanuts, coffee cups, and more. It is one of the most extensive bans of this type in the U.S.
Composting Pays
Many people compost their food scraps and yard waste because they think it is the right thing to do. In some places, like San Francisco and Seattle, there is curbside pickup available to have these organic materials composted.
Composting: Recycling's final frontier
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According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the US produced 250 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2011 and more than half of it was compostable materials such as yard trimmings, paper and cardboard, and food waste. [Read more…] about Composting: Recycling's final frontier
Meat demand and the environment
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The world’s population growth rate has been declining since its 20th Century peak – when mechanized agriculture, improved sanitation, and medical advances lead to the greatest population boom in human history. [Read more…] about Meat demand and the environment
Biochar and carbon
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance that is made by burning organic materials like crop and forestry wastes in a controlled process called pyrolysis, which is burning in an oxygen-deprived environment. Pyrolysis produces little or no contaminating fumes and results in a stable form of carbon that can’t easily escape into the atmosphere. Biochar is a very efficient way to convert carbon into a stable form.
Adding charred biomass to improve soil quality has been done for thousands of years. Indigenous people in the Amazon added charcoal, food residue, and other waste to their soil. When mixed with soil, biochar creates favorable conditions for root growth and microbial activities, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year, 125,000 tons of carbon dioxide were removed worldwide in the durable carbon market, which is a carbon credit marketplace for carbon removal. About 93% of that was in the form of biochar.
Biochar represents a value-added way to deal with agricultural waste and also to make use of dead trees in forests that should be removed to lower the risk of wildfires caused by the presence of all that dry tinder material.
A bill to fund biochar research is pending before the Senate Agricultural Committee. It is a rare example of bipartisan legislation.
Biochar is currently expensive to make in the US because large amounts of biomass must be shipped to one of the fewer than 50 small-scale production facilities in the country. But with appropriate infrastructure, biochar could play an important role in efforts to sequester carbon and combat climate change.
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Biochar Is ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ for Sequestering Carbon and Combating Climate Change
Photo, posted September 3, 2019, courtesy of Tracy Robillard / NRCS via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
The carbon footprint of urban agriculture
Urban agriculture – essentially farming within a city – has become increasingly popular worldwide. It is intended to make cities and urban food systems more sustainable. There are social and nutritional benefits to urban agriculture, but its carbon footprint has not been widely studied.
There are high-tech, energy-intensive forms of urban agriculture, such as vertical farms and rooftop greenhouses. But most urban farms are decidedly low-tech such as individual gardens managed by single farmers and community gardens managed by small groups of people.
A comprehensive international study led by the University of Michigan calculated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the materials and activities of urban farms over their operating lives. The emissions, expressed in the quantity of carbon dioxide equivalents produced per serving of food, were then compared to those of foods raised by conventional agriculture.
On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted six times higher amounts of CO2 per serving than conventionally grown produce.
The study went on to recommend best practices crucial to making low-tech urban agriculture more carbon-competitive with conventional agriculture. These include making use of infrastructure for more extended periods of time, making use of urban waste, and maximizing social and health benefits.
Urban agriculture offers a variety of social, nutritional, and place-based environmental benefits and has its place in future sustainable cities. It is important to implement it in ways that are most beneficial.
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Study finds that urban agriculture must be carefully planned to have climate benefits
Photo, posted July 27, 2016, courtesy of Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Electricity from chicken feathers
The food industry generates enormous amounts of waste and by-products. Each year, 40 million tons of chicken feathers are incinerated, causing adverse environmental effects. Not only does it release large amounts of carbon dioxide but also produces toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide.
Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a way to put chicken feathers to good use by using them to make fuel cells more cost-effective and sustainable.
Using a simple and environmentally friendly process, they extract the keratin from the feathers. Keratin is the protein that helps form hair, nails, the outer layer of skin, and feathers. The extracted keratin is then converted into ultra-fine fibers known as amyloid fibrils. The keratin fibrils are used in the membrane of a fuel cell.
Fuel cells generate clean energy from hydrogen and oxygen with only heat and water as byproducts. At the heart of every fuel cell is a semipermeable membrane that allows protons to pass through but blocks electrons, thereby producing an electric current. Fuel cells are the primary way hydrogen is used to directly generate electricity. Hydrogen cars run on fuel cells.
Conventional fuel cells typically use membranes made from highly toxic chemicals. The new ETH membranes essentially replace these toxic substances with biological keratin.
The researchers are investigating how stable and durable their keratin membrane is and to improve it if necessary. The team has already applied for a joint patent and is looking for partners and investors to further develop the technology and bring it to market.
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Generating clean electricity with chicken feathers
Photo, posted July 10, 2016, courtesy of Matthew Bellemare via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Protecting berries with sunflower extract
Many of us buy blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and more in those little clear plastic clamshell boxes. We try to check them out at the store to make sure they are ok and even if are, many soon end up coated with gray mold and other fungi. It is a problem that is both disappointing and expensive.
Researchers from several Chinese Universities recently reported that compounds extracted from sunflower crop waste are quite effective at preventing rotting in blueberries. They suggest that the food industry could use these natural compounds to protect berries from postharvest diseases.
Sunflowers are grown globally for their seeds and oil. The flower stems themselves are generally considered to be a waste product. Sunflowers are known to be particularly resistant to many plant diseases so the researchers decided to investigate whether there might be chemical constituents within the plants that are responsible for the protective property.
Their research led to the isolation of 17 different compounds known as diterpenoids, including four that have never been identified before. They found that 4 of the compounds, including 2 of the newly discovered ones, were effective at preventing the growth of fungus on the blueberries.
Berries were wetted with the compounds and then dried off and injected with mold spores. Half of the treated berries were protected from the mold.
There is no reason that the method couldn’t be applied to a variety of crops. There is great appeal in the concept of using a harmless extract from a plant to render a food crop safe from fungal infestation. The technique holds great promise in preventing postharvest disease in fruit.
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Sunflower extract fights fungi to keep blueberries fresh
Photo, posted August 26, 2006, courtesy of Liz West via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Plastic Eating Fungus | Earth Wise
More than five billion tons of plastic have accumulated on land and sea including the most remote regions of the planet as well as in the bodies of animals and humans. There is a compelling need to recycle as much plastic as possible but doing so is a major challenge. Plastic comes in many varieties and breaking it down for reuse requires different methods for each.
Polypropylene is one of the biggest challenges for recycling. It is a very common plastic used for all sorts of products including food containers, coat hangers, plastic wrap, toys, and much more. It accounts for roughly 28% of the world’s plastic waste, but only 1% of it is recycled.
Polypropylene is seldom recycled because it generally has a short life as a packaging material, and it often becomes contaminated by other materials and plastics. Thus, it generally ends up in landfills.
Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have discovered that two common strains of fungi were able to successfully biodegrade polypropylene. The fungi species – with unavoidable Latin names of Aspergillus terreus and Engyodontium album – are typically found in soil and plants.
The researchers found that the fungi were able to break down polypropylene after it had been pre-treated with either UV light or heat, by 21% over 30 days, and by 25-27% over 90 days. This seems rather slow but compared with the nearly endless life of polypropylene in landfills, it is a major improvement.
The hope is that methods like this could ultimately reduce the amount of plastic polluting the environment by encouraging plastic to biodegrade naturally under the appropriate conditions.
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Fungi makes meal of hard to recycle plastic
Photo, posted March 5, 2010, courtesy of Kevin Krejci via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
A Green New Year | Earth Wise
Every year, millions of people around the world make resolutions in hopes of sparking positive changes in the new year. Popular resolutions include improving health and fitness, traveling more, spending less, and so on. With the New Year just around the corner, here are seven resolutions we all could make that would collectively have a major impact on the planet:
1) Eat less meat. Resource-intensive animal-based foods like meat, dairy, and eggs are one of the chief contributors to climate change.
2) Get a home energy audit. It’s a great way to understand your home’s energy footprint and discover ways to improve the energy efficiency of your home.
3) Buy local whenever possible. Shopping locally supports the local economy and dramatically cuts down on the carbon emissions associated with shipping.
4) Carry reusable shopping bags on errands. While disposable shopping bags are convenient, they are difficult to recycle and are often thrown away.
5) Air dry your laundry whenever possible. Drying clothes outside or using an indoor drying rack can save money and energy. Americans spend about $9 billion a year on electricity to dry clothing.
6) Purchase used or pre-owned items. The market for second-hand items is booming, making it possible to purchase pretty much anything you want at thrift stores or online.
7) Bring a reusable water bottle everywhere. According to the EPA, Americans throw away enough plastic bottles each year to circle the earth five times. Carrying your own bottle helps reduce this waste and will save you money.
As we ring in the new year this weekend, let’s raise our glasses to a cleaner and greener 2023.
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10 Sustainable New Year’s Resolutions!
Photo, posted December 31, 2014, courtesy of Doug Anderson via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Fuel From Coffee Grounds | Earth Wise
The world drinks a lot of coffee. Americans alone consume 400 million cups a day. Each cup of coffee results in about half an ounce of coffee grounds. Adding that up, this country produces over 6,000 tons of coffee grounds each day. While coffee grounds are not particularly harmful, that is an awful lot of waste that mostly ends up in landfills or is incinerated.
Researchers at Aston University in the UK have developed a method of producing high-quality biodiesel fuel from coffee grounds. Their study was published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
The technique consists of growing a particular species of microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris) directly on spent coffee grounds. The coffee grounds provide both the nutrients for the microalgae and a structure upon which it can grow. Exposing the algae to light for 20 hours a day and dark for just four hours a day produced the best quality biodiesel.
Microalgae is well-known as a feedstock for biodiesel production. Previously, it has been grown on materials like polyurethane foam or nylon which don’t provide any nutrients. Using the coffee grounds as the substrate for growth means that no external nutrients are needed.
The resultant enhanced biodiesel produces minimal emissions and good engine performance and meets both US and European specifications. This feedstock for producing biodiesel is ideal since it doesn’t require any competition with food crops and instead makes use of a widely available waste product. The hope is that it may reduce the cutting down of palm trees to extract oil for biofuel. In southeast Asia, this has been a major source of deforestation and increased greenhouse gas emissions.
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Photo, posted October 13, 2007, courtesy of David Joyce via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio