Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
washingtonpost.com
Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#2But there's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is worse than natural decomposition.
I would like to know why the amount of food wasted took off in 1980 and nearly quadrupled over the following 3 decades. i'm guessing changes in USDA standards about acceptable quality of food for sale, but I was hoping the author would have researched this.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#3But there's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is worse than natural decomposition. I wo…
I'm guessing it is mostly increasing affluence [+], partially causing a portion size war for food other than prepared-at-home meals (which are a much larger percentage of the US diet in 2014 as compared to 1980), and partially applying somewhat richer standards with regards to what food is fresh enough for consumption. At a certain point of affluence, why have three day old leftovers (even if they're palatable) when that competes with a generous serving of delicious piping hot fresh-cooked food? Why keep half a bunch of bananas which are two days from optimally ripe when you can simply replace them with a bunch of bananas which are optimally ripe? etc, etc
I'd expect global food waste, measured in terms of absolute tonnage, to go up over time as the world gets wealthier and less people, at the margin, have to make the choice between "eat foot which is less than maximally palatable to me" and "go hungry."
[+] "But Americans aren't richer in 2014 compared to 1980." Long story, but I strongly disbelieve this, especially with regards to food.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#4But there's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is worse than natural decomposition. I wo…
Anaerobic decomposition releases methane, which is about the worst possible configuration for your carbon and hydrogen atoms from a greenhouse effect point of view. Releasing the equivalent in carbon dioxide + water vapour (by letting it decompose somewhere with oxygen available - or equivalently by burning it or having animals eat it) would be far less damaging.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#5Tentatively - this might not really be much of a problem? In many situations, we deliberately make sure we have excess capacity because it's better to have too much than too little. For example, I have a server running idle most of the time, but it's available to pick up a large long-running task when a user requests it. Analogously, when catering for an event, people often aim to have more than enough food for almost all scenarios, so they'll throw away food almost all the time. Running a restaurant is catering an event every day. When I was a teenager, I worked at Subway and we'd try to have more than enough bread (we only ran out once when we didn't anticipate a large sports-win-based city-wide party), so we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day.
Of course, people are starving and that's terrible. But reducing food waste in developed countries doesn't seem like a powerful lever to reduce it. Non-wasted food isn't going to be transported to developing nations. Reducing food demand would likely decrease food prices, but I wouldn't expect a large decrease. If my understanding is correct, the food supply is quite elastic, meaning we can easily produce more if there's people willing and able to pay for it.
I think that the two main problems behind starvation are the lack of purchasing power of the poverty-stricken, and broken political systems. Solving those would eliminate starvation, even if the developed nations waste as much food as they like.
(I'm no expert on this and welcome any corrections or opposing views.)
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#6But there's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is worse than natural decomposition. I wo…
Anaerobic decomposition releases methane, which is about the worst possible configuration for your carbon and hydrogen atoms from a greenhouse effect point of view. Releasing the equivalent in carbon dioxide + water vapour (by letting it decompose somewhere with oxygen available - or equivalently by burning it or having animals eat it) would be far less damaging.
Anaerobic -- so, composting it would not produce methane?
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#7Tentatively - this might not really be much of a problem? In many situations, we deliberately make sure we have excess capacity because it's better to have too much than too little. For example, I have a server running idle most of the time, but it's available to pick up a large long-running task when a user requests it. Analogously, when catering for an event, people often aim to have more than enough food for almos…
About 7 years ago I remember in Australia we had a couple of bad years of drought and there was a food shortage.
I remember reading in the paper that this would put the cost of food up, in some cases because we would be importing but in other cases becasue of the simple fact that when things are scarce they cost more.
What was really striking to me is that no-one was going to go hungry - we weren't going to run out of food. It would just cost more. Therefore people would naturally waste less food I suppose.
So in order to keep food cheap, we have to throw half of it away.
The same goes for virtually all resources: power, water, petrol etc. what the political debate always dodges here is that in order to reduce consumption the cost has to go up which means discretionary spending power will decrease and the economy will collapse.
The sooner the better.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#8Tentatively - this might not really be much of a problem? In many situations, we deliberately make sure we have excess capacity because it's better to have too much than too little. For example, I have a server running idle most of the time, but it's available to pick up a large long-running task when a user requests it. Analogously, when catering for an event, people often aim to have more than enough food for almos…
About 7 years ago I remember in Australia we had a couple of bad years of drought and there was a food shortage. I remember reading in the paper that this would put the cost of food up, in some cases because we would be importing but in other cases becasue of the simple fact that when things are scarce they cost more. What was really striking to me is that no-one was going to go hungry - we weren't going to run out o…
The reason you didn't starve wasn't that people just wasted less, but also that you had the capacity to import. The economy that you so hate is what prevented you from starving in the first place.
The countries that experience hunger are either too poor to afford imports or involved in a conflict.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#9Tentatively - this might not really be much of a problem? In many situations, we deliberately make sure we have excess capacity because it's better to have too much than too little. For example, I have a server running idle most of the time, but it's available to pick up a large long-running task when a user requests it. Analogously, when catering for an event, people often aim to have more than enough food for almos…
About 7 years ago I remember in Australia we had a couple of bad years of drought and there was a food shortage. I remember reading in the paper that this would put the cost of food up, in some cases because we would be importing but in other cases becasue of the simple fact that when things are scarce they cost more. What was really striking to me is that no-one was going to go hungry - we weren't going to run out o…
>So in order to keep food cheap, we have to throw half of it away.
Wut
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 7 years ago I remember in Australia we had a couple of bad years of drought and there was a food shortage. I remember reading in the paper that this would put the cost of food up, in some cases because we would be importing but in other cases becasue of the simple fact that when things are scarce they cost more. What was really striking to me is that no-one was going to go hungry - we weren't going to run out o…
>So in order to keep food cheap, we have to throw half of it away. Wut
I guess he's saying that for food to be this cheap seen with our eyes, there needs to be a substantial oversupply. And since there are physical limitations to how much food we are able to actually eat, if there's an oversupply a bunch of it will be thrown away, whether by farmers, distributors or consumers:
Either they fail to sell the food, or the low prices gets consumers to buy more than they need.