But do they feed it back to the fabricants already ?
South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
21–30 of 174 posts
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#22"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???
I've lived with a variety of random people in shared circumstances, and it seems quite common for people to pack a refrigerator with perishables either in the form of leftovers or new groceries then forget it exists while continuing to eat the most convenient stuff at restaurants/the office.
Refrigeration in general encourages the behavior, without delivering on convenience since you generally have to reheat or partially recook the food only to have something inferior to the more convenient, freshly made by someone else option.
People I've known feel accomplished just by asking to take leftovers home and placing them in the refrigerator with the feigned intention of eating them, knowing full well they will spoil and go to waste. It's an absurdity; they add packaging waste (often plastic at least in the bag) to their charade, mostly because they don't want to appear wasteful at the location they didn't finish their meal, and wish to dispose of it in the privacy of their home after spending energy on refrigerating it for a week.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Much of the 'compost' you receive at big-box stores is treated human waste: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-bioso...
I don't see anything on that page to support this specific claim.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#24"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???
Keep in mind that a lot of that "waste" happens before the food reaches us consumers.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#25"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.
"Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates"
I've worked in a few. As a European I'd say food waste was lower than that.
Id expect restaurant food waste to be higher, as they can't personalise portion sizes as effectively, so unless most people eat out most days, I don't see how that could account for all the waste.
But apparently it does? I really hope peelings etc are included, because even then there's still a family out there wasting 3kg+ of food/person/wk, just to balance my family out.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#26It's important to bring up the Food Recovery Hierarchy when talking about food waste. Composting is not the least desirable outcome, but it is close. We really need to focus on the higher priority reduction methods:
https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recover...
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#27"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.
I don't think we have to look further than the convenience culture to explain the behavior. It's not, in my experience, economical at all. The people I see wasting food are being very wasteful of their money in the process, they're just being stupid and careless.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#28"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???
Keep in mind that a lot of that "waste" happens before the food reaches us consumers.
This is just the consumer waste. Ie the red bit of that first chart.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Much of the 'compost' you receive at big-box stores is treated human waste: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-bioso... I don't see anything on that page to support this specific claim.
Not "most", but there is milorganite.
https://www.milorganite.com/using-milorganite/what-is-milorg...
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> " It isn't profitable because fossil fuels are artificially cheap "
Not that cheap. In the aforementioned metal recycling example, the energy is typically coming from fossil fuels too; refining aluminum from ore takes an insane amount of electrical power. Even if you do that with renewable energy, that's still that much power that can't be used for other things that must be supplied by another power source (e.g. fossil fuels.)