Every time I ate pork there they always bragged about how it had been fed garbage T_T When I researched it later, it turned out that in the US we stopped feeding leftovers to pigs a long time ago due to health concerns. Laws were passed stipulating that garbage be boiled before being fed to pigs, but that made it too expensive so everyone stopped doing it.
South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
101–110 of 174 posts
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good compost does not smell but does attract (in NA) the likes of racoons and black bears and some people vocally don't like that.
It also attracts lots of insects. While it's ok in general, you probably don't want a farm of them right next to where you sit/eat.
In Taiwan, that translates to giant flying cockroaches. And the giant wolf spiders that eat them.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#103Food used on farms decomposes directly into the atmosphere, including methane. Food sent to landfill decomposes poorly with an increased methane output, but some of the methane can be captured to generate electricity. I'm not qualified at all to analyze this properly. The former method makes use of food to displace use of fossil fuels in farming. The latter displaces use of fossil fuels for electricity generation. Is…
I recently learnt of a food waste recycling method that avoids decomposition and release of methane. It is called bokashi and it uses homolactic fermentation to break down the food waste. Quoting the wikipedia article [1]:
> Homolactic fermentation breaks no carbon bonds and emits no gas; its overall equation is C6H12O6 (carbohydrate) → 2 CH3CHOHCOOH (lactic acid). It is a mildly endothermic reaction, emitting no energy; the fermentation vessel remains at ambient temperature.
Interestingly, this method was historically developed in Korea, as is also detailed in the wikipedia article.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#104> 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.
Yes my uncle used to feed almost all food waste to his pigs. Then we ate the pigs. Unfortunately suburban Silicon Valley residents don't appreciate backyard pigs.
Chicken will eat a lot of table scraps and are backyard friendly in many places
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it requires less fuel than the Haber-Bosch process, then why is it not profitable? That was clearly intended as a zing, but it just shows you aren't thinking about this right. Conventional ammonia production is vastly less efficient than just composting your garbage. Be real here. Bacteria literally do the job at a labor cost of zero and all you need to do is keep it in a stable environment. What hurts is what a…
I felt like the parent was asking the question not as a zing but an earnest question.
I'm a deep green (I don't eat meat, I don't fly, I don't drive), but I'm also a skeptical green. There is an overwhelming presumption that recycling must be good for the environment, but the evidence is often weak or nonexistent. I'd be more than happy to support food waste recycling if someone can provide good evidence that it actually is environmentally beneficial.
The classic example is plastic versus re-usable glass bottles - plastic nearly always proves to be more sustainable than glass, because glass bottles require vastly more energy to manufacture, they're much heavier to transport, they require surprisingly large amounts of energy to wash and they have relatively short average lifespans. The plastic waste issue is quite effectively solved by just burning it - plastic waste is a perfectly good hydrocarbon fuel.
http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doo...
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly can be a reduction if you can compost at home. The result is useful. The effort is very minimal if you don't need it to compost quickly. It doesn't need to be transported to a landfill. And my understanding is that it breaks down into carbon dioxide instead of methane if you compost instead of landfill, which is a win for climate change.
I live in a rural area without refuse collection. Having to deal with it all yourself really focuses the mind on keeping waste of all types to a minumum. I suspect more fees for waste collection is what would do likewise for urban dwellers.
We live in a rural area as well and we have to take any trash either to the dump or a convenience center. Since we compost, recycle, and raise a significant percentage of our food, we only actually need to take trash to the dump once a month at most.
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that not overproduction in a sense?
Not exactly. For example, if you have a picker machine harvesting 80% of crop, and manual work ain't cheap (it's Norway), you'd probably throw 20%. But you can't "ungrow" it in any meaningful sense. Agriculture is complex.
One "solution":
Invite people to come down to hand-harvest the rest of it. Charge them a nominal fee (if at all).
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lot of waste in the food supply chain. Some of that is suitable for human consumption at the point where it is classified as waste [1]. In Europe the food waste in fruit and vegetables is over 50% [2], of which at least half could be turned into black soldier fly or mealworm feed, which makes for good poultry or fish feed. But most of it today is going into waste dumps or at best turned into biogas. Disclo…
Can you share which startup you work for? I've been wanting to work for a company like that
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Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that as a result of overproduction or just wastefulness?
At every point in the supply chain (grow, pick, sort, package, deliver...) a % of produce becomes more expensive to keep than to throw. So it being dropped.
Shouldn’t that be exported to underfed populations?
Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly. For example, if you have a picker machine harvesting 80% of crop, and manual work ain't cheap (it's Norway), you'd probably throw 20%. But you can't "ungrow" it in any meaningful sense. Agriculture is complex.
One "solution": Invite people to come down to hand-harvest the rest of it. Charge them a nominal fee (if at all).
This sounds more wasteful to me. In terms of manpower and cost of commute.