Completely anecdotical: I have been in this country 5 days and I have already gained 3 kilos.
Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
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Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#12Tentatively - 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…
I'm sorry but throwing food is nothing like shutting down a server. In the first case (food), significant amounts of water, energy and effort have been expended to create what is being thrown away, but in the latter case you merely stop using electricity or bandwidth (which doesn't get wasted).
A better comparison would be buying 3-4 different types of servers because you weren't sure what the final load would be, and then deciding to throw away a few because you bought too many.
California, America's "salad bowl", is facing a drought that threatens to turn it into a dust bowl. So even as a foreigner I'd think America throwing away 35 million tonnes of food every year is a serious cause for concern.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#13Tentatively - 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…
I think you're spot on. I have read many articles suggesting that the problem is not food production, it's the logistics around getting it from the people who are producing it to the people who need it. This is not free, and quite expensive. I recall the first time I became aware of this, they mentioned a BOAT LOAD of rice that had been donating but it was waiting on transportation funds to move to those in need.
It's my understanding that we can provide for everyone on earth so that their is no starvation. Unfortunately capitalism isn't quite up to the task.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#14Tentatively - 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…
broken political systems are the primary cause of starvation because they inherently disrupt supply and production; simply look towards Venezuela for an example if Zimbabwe where productive countries took a drastic turn for the worse.
In the US throw in the issue that many companies do not understand the protection afforded by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Law or that many facilities needing donations have no way to pick them up. Some cities have processes in place to organize and pick up donations and there are even some charity groups that do it, but its not widespread. A lot of waste in grocery is expired fruits, vegetables, and bakery, that may not be covered under the Emerson bill
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#15Tentatively - 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…
As much as we like to ignore it in our ivory tech towers, lack of affordable food is a problem in most developed countries.
Also, the production and distribution of food produces a lot a waste that is considerably more problematic than organic waste.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#16But 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…
The plants were mostly grown in petroluem based fertiliser, factory farming of crops puts 10 calories in to get 1 out. Pre WW2 it was 1 in 2 out.
The separation of livestock fed on subsidised corn from farms growing plants means lakes of "waste" manure that used to be used as fertiliser become an environmental problem instead of a solution.
And for business minded farmers thinking about mixed agriculture they discover that corn feed is cheaper to buy than to grow.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Food only looks cheap at the point of consumption. Millions of tax dollars went into the subsidy.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#18Tentatively - 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…
>> "we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day"
And here's the problem. Good food getting wasted. That bread would be perfectly fine the next day and 90% of people would be happy with it but the business would rather waste it and have something perfect. The same thing happens in grocery stores. If a multi pack of crisps/chips splits they throw out the entire thing even though every pack inside the large container remains sealed. They could sell those individually or tape up the outer container and offer a discount. When I worked in a grocery store the amount of good food thrown away was unbelievable. I'm sure the amount of wasted food could be reduced significantly by focusing on these areas which don't fall under the 'better to have too much than too little' rule you mentioned.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#19Isn't that uh...kind of to be expected?
Food is cheap, renewable, spoils fast, and can't really be recycled usefully (compost and bio-diesel stills are very fringe cases. The other items on the list are some mixture of expensive, non-renewable, non-perishable, or easily recyclable.
Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass
#20Here are some more facts about food wastage in America:
1. America wasted 33.79 million tons of food in 2010 and this figure keeps on increasing as population grows.
2. The above mentioned figure is enough to fill 91 Empire state buidings.
3. 17.2 households in America were insecure of food in 2010.