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Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#41

Post by ntaso »

disputin wrote: post #31
k-mcgrady wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "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 cont…

I'm guessing you got voted down because people don't want to eat bread baked the previous evening. Of course, I don't know because there are no frikkin' comments from the trigger happy. Even if they don't like your bread idea, doesn't your multi-pack point cancel that out? Waitrose discounts ageing sandwiches. I think you have a point that small improvements could be made in multiple areas. Assuming waste is a proble…

In Germany, in some places there are bakeries that offer bread from the day before for a discount.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#42

Post by spacefight »

iopq wrote: post #21

It's economics. If I buy half a gallon of half and half, I know full well I don't need half a gallon for my coffee before it spoils. I estimate that between 40% and 0% of it will be wasted on average depending on how many weeks it lasts in the fridge. But if I compare it to buying a quart, a quart will cost me around $2.49 while half a gallon would cost me $3.79 This means that for a cost of $3.79 I get to use 0.4 ga…

Shocking. Just buy what you need and live happier :)

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#43

Post by tfinniga »

pesenti wrote: post #35
guard-of-terra wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much business opportunity in people who don't have money.

Why does it have to involve people who don't have money? How about not producing the food in the first place through better logistic? That could potentially be a huge saving for rich people.

That's an interesting point. How would you take advantage of this?

I think the main reason why people buy more food than they need is because the demand is somewhat unknown, and food is so cheap that it's safer to err on the side of having too much. That is, it's worth it to pay more in order to not have to worry about whether you'll have enough food when you want it.

Right now the only way to make sure you have enough is to buy more than you need by a safety margin. But what if there was some way to easily procure/prepare the food on an as-needed basis?

I've seen ideas about having a 3d printer, where large stocks of food could be kept and combined as needed into a variety of recipes. The inputs would be stored dry, so they won't go bad as quickly.

This might work, but there are downsides as well. Specifically, you might have problems getting the food to taste good enough to be a viable alternative. From the link, the top types of food wasted are fruit and veg, seafood, grains, meat, and milk. A powdered version of grains might work, but you'd probably have difficult getting all other types to be tasty/healthy enough. I mean, there's a reason why everyone isn't eating canned food all the time.

Another idea is to improve the just-in-time logistics, like the drone burrito delivery. Aside from the regulatory hurdles, I think this would work pretty well - pay more in order to not have to worry about whether you'll have enough food when you want it. There might also be a B2B angle to this with restaurants or grocery stores. Amazon has done some work on this with AmazonFresh, where they do same-day delivery of perishables.

The other thing to realize is that the actual farming is apparently only 16-18% of the price paid for the food, so you'd hope to get efficiencies elsewhere.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#44

Post by oftenwrong »

michaelkeenan wrote: post #5

Tentatively - 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…

Many stores sell "yesterday's bread" which keeps well if sliced and frozen, or can be used for bread crumbs, bread pudding, French toast, crouton, etc. One time I was in a store and asked where they had "yesterday's bread", and they said they don't have any because at the end of the day they donate it to some organization that collects excess food and distributes it to the poor.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#45

Post by bilbo0s »

Shivetya wrote: post #14
michaelkeenan wrote: post #5

Tentatively - 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 t…

I'm admittedly a little ill informed on the subject of Venezuela, (though I don't believe people starve in Venezuela either. I've just never been there, so I can't say for sure)...

But people in Zimbabwe don't starve. I'm curious where you got this idea? There are a lot of parts of Africa where people DO starve however. Additionally, Zimbabwe's agricultural industry has never been a producer of food. Their principal product was tobacco... which was then traded for food. (Among other things.)

You are correct about one thing... the broken political system did do in the tobacco farmers.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#46

Post by XorNot »

Rapzid wrote: post #13
michaelkeenan wrote: post #5

Tentatively - 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'…

Capitalism has very little to do with it.

How do you stop a local warlord who uses starvation to control his people? How do you deal with all his cronies and standover men who are then out of business once you do? How do you then deal with the newly found dependence, and superstition about the colonists who came in and removed him? Coz they sure look like just another warlord and so on and so forth.

If capitalism was the only problem with world hunger, then we'd have already solved it.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#47

Post by k-mcgrady »

mendort wrote: post #40
k-mcgrady wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "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 cont…

In my region there is a group of charities that get food that would otherwise have been thrown out from local grocery stores. The handling of the food tends to be a bit careless so it's best to stay away from the things that really need to be refrigerated, but it was really helpful for me when I was unemployed. So I for one am glad that grocery stores have too much.

That's great but my point wasn't that they have too much. It was that they are throwing away perfectly good things with only surface/package damage. Giving them to a charity is a much better solution that throwing them in the trash.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#48

Post by Retric »

SixSigma wrote: post #17
vidarh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the type, some food receives no subsidy. Meat tends to receive a huge subsidys.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#49

Post by pbhjpbhj »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #47
mendort wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my region there is a group of charities that get food that would otherwise have been thrown out from local grocery stores. The handling of the food tends to be a bit careless so it's best to stay away from the things that really need to be refrigerated, but it was really helpful for me when I was unemployed. So I for one am glad that grocery stores have too much.

That's great but my point wasn't that they have too much. It was that they are throwing away perfectly good things with only surface/package damage. Giving them to a charity is a much better solution that throwing them in the trash.

There's a national chain of bakeries that operate in our town. They don't offer any discounts at the end of the day because that means that people won't pay full price but will soak up the left overs instead.

Selling seconds/discount items reduces waste but [in poorer areas in particular it seems, and more so with food] it acts as competition against your own full price product. Companies would rather produce waste than damage profits.

Of course there's a fine line and in some areas of commerce price discrimination based on spoilt" goods will be worth while. In large-scale food production the costs of food relative to the selling price are usually low and the negative effects of food wastage aren't born directly by those who do it, it's mainly the same effects as commercial over-farming. Wasting food causes floods (!) but the local bakery don't get the insurance bill and so don't care.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#50

Post by ChuckMcM »

There are questions here which the story doesn't answer and I think might be germane to the issues. One is what is the per capita amount of food thrown out between now and 1960. The population according to the census went from 180M to 308M or an increase of 71%. At a simple geometric ratio if you assume that would make 20M lbs the '1960's equivalent. And there is the sudden change in the slope in 1980, (what is up with that?) and there is no reference to whether or not things recycled are considered to be part of the 'trash' or not. Between 1980 and today our "garbage" has largely skewed toward food because every thing else is usually in the recycle bin (paper, plastic, containers, Etc.) The article seems to try to connect this amount of food waste and hunger, although avoids the locality issue and spoilage, where 20,000 tons of juicy grapes in Napa county California can do nothing for sub-Sarahan Africa hunger. Even Rice crops which can feed people anywhere in the world are under utilized when the government people have in place prevents such aid from arriving, or spends their resources on other things rather than securing food.

Having looked at the 'hunger' problem in a lot of ways, and supported a number of efforts to combat it where it can be addressed, I have come to understand how much food is lost through spoilage or is discarded by people who might have eaten it, is irrelevant to the larger problems. There may be a connection at some level but I have yet to find a situation where the people who need food, would have had it available but for the fact that someone else had already gotten it and thrown it away.

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