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South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

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Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's less than a kilo a week, say 120 g per person per day. In my household I suspect that most of that is potato peelings, onion skins, orange, apple, and banana peel, teabags, etc. If you drink tea five times a day you have 10 g of teabags. So, what is the definition of food waste? If it is food that could be eaten then in my household of four people it is very close to zero. But still the kitchen compost bin is…

> If you drink tea five times a day you have 10 g of teabags. Who drinks tea five times a day??

Good point - it's an entirely unrealistic number. It's just hit 1pm and I'm on my 6th already.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's less than a kilo a week, say 120 g per person per day. In my household I suspect that most of that is potato peelings, onion skins, orange, apple, and banana peel, teabags, etc. If you drink tea five times a day you have 10 g of teabags. So, what is the definition of food waste? If it is food that could be eaten then in my household of four people it is very close to zero. But still the kitchen compost bin is…

> If you drink tea five times a day you have 10 g of teabags. Who drinks tea five times a day??

A fairly large portion of the world’s population?

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#173
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Donating your overproduced (and likely subsidized) food to poorer countries also disincentivizes food production there, thereby perpetuating the food shortage problem.

Re: South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. fo…

You place aluminium plants where the energy is cheap e.g. Iceland, it is often cheap because it's hard to export energy.
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