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South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

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Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#11

Post by linuxftw »

benj111 wrote: post #4
maerF0x0 wrote: post #2

> There’s a limit to how much food waste fertilizer can actually be used once upon a time we fed food waste to animals to "recycle" the caloric content. Think table scraps(but not meat) going to pigs or chickens. Would be interesting if we close the loop on this household content Edit: Added note that I meant "vegan" scraps.

I believe in China it was common to site toilets over pig stys. Some loop closing isn't a very good idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet

Gross.

Much of the 'compost' you receive at big-box stores is treated human waste: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-bioso...

Not much goes to waste in the USA on an industrial scale.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#12

Post by altcognito »

benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

Food has a high % of water content and is therefore very heavy.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#13

Post by remote_phone »

benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

It’s very easy. At least in the US, portion sizes are too big. If you go to a restaurant it’s profitable for them to increase the size of a meal by 50% and charge 25% more, which looks like a cost savings and value. But then the food ends up being wasted.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#14

Post by Haga »

jdietrich wrote: post #7

>The bag charges also meet 60% of the cost of running the scheme Recycling metals is substantially profitable, because scrap metal is actually worth something. Making new metal from old metal requires far less energy than making new metals from raw ore, even factoring in the costs of transportation and processing. Does collecting and composting food waste actually result in a net reduction of our use of finite resour…

One can extract the energy in food?

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#15

Post by linuxftw »

benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

Many people don't eat leftovers. In some cases it's cheaper to buy 5 lbs of something and throw out 2 pounds than to pay for 3 1-lb packages.

Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates.

This is all a symptom of a distorted market place. Food's too cheap thanks to subsidized farming.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#16

Post by AngryData »

jdietrich wrote: post #10
AngryData wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60% of the world's crop yield is the direct result of fossil fuel derived fertilizers. Recycling food is recycling fossil fuels, otherwise it just ends up rotting into the environment and polluting it just the same as burning the fuels except you aren't doing anything with it if it just rots in a landfill.

> Recycling food is recycling fossil fuels How much fuel do you have to burn to turn that waste food into usable nitrates? If it requires less fuel than the Haber-Bosch process, then why is it not profitable?

Or you can compost it into fertilizer. It isn't profitable because fossil fuels are artificially cheap and aren't paying for the externalized costs of pollution. Also, if you did it right you can also burn food directly as fuel.

Haber-Bosch process isn't a free lunch where free energy just pops into existence.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#17

Post by alpha_squared »

benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

Between throwing out food that's gone bad and leaving unfinished plates at restaurants, I can absolutely believe that. There are some who strictly abide by the packaging expiration date and many people don't package the remainder of their restaurant dish to take home.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#18

Post by spiderfarmer »

keypress wrote: post #3
maerF0x0 wrote: post #2

> There’s a limit to how much food waste fertilizer can actually be used once upon a time we fed food waste to animals to "recycle" the caloric content. Think table scraps(but not meat) going to pigs or chickens. Would be interesting if we close the loop on this household content Edit: Added note that I meant "vegan" scraps.

Stopped in the UK due to BSE, and not being able to audit ingredients. I wonder if cockcroach protein powder would bypass brain wasting disease and other nasties.

Black flies and worms are currently tested in The Netherlands. It’s 10 times more expensive vs other protein sources, mostly byproducts from human food production.

Dutch source: http://edepot.wur.nl/362233

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#19

Post by wavefunction »

Haga wrote: post #14
jdietrich wrote: post #7

>The bag charges also meet 60% of the cost of running the scheme Recycling metals is substantially profitable, because scrap metal is actually worth something. Making new metal from old metal requires far less energy than making new metals from raw ore, even factoring in the costs of transportation and processing. Does collecting and composting food waste actually result in a net reduction of our use of finite resour…

One can extract the energy in food?

Primarily digestion, but for "left-overs" or food waste and scraps there's vermiculture and composting. I guess we have mass digesters now too to turn the material into heat.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#20

Post by punnerud »

Norway: 50% of food, 77% of energy in waste, and 97% of toxic waste is recycled. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

We are also rebuilding some of our plants to sort waste with machine learning. The initial tests are really promising. Several of them are already sorting out most plastic using spectrometer-sensors, so we don’t need to do it manually. In combination with the machine learning the tests get it up to 99.9% or higher. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

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