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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

#41

Post by tgb »

jdietrich wrote: post #7

>The bag charges also meet 60% of the cost of running the scheme Recycling metals is substantially profitable, because scrap metal is actually worth something. Making new metal from old metal requires far less energy than making new metals from raw ore, even factoring in the costs of transportation and processing. Does collecting and composting food waste actually result in a net reduction of our use of finite resour…

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.

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

#43

Post by dEnigma »

crazygringo wrote: post #35
benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

Yes that sounds insane. That's 0.6 lbs food per day , which is the same as throwing away by weight every day (using McD's as an internationally recognizable reference): - 1.5 McDonald's quarter-pounder sandwiches [1] - or 2.5 portions of McDonald's medium fries [2] That seems like a lot of food to waste. Like that just doesn't pass the smell test... Maybe they're counting liquids like milk too, that's gone past the e…

Of course it should count as food waste if you let your milk expire and throw/pour it away (or worse, pour it away because it's past the expiration date, even though it's still perfectly fine)

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

#45

Post by azernik »

darkpuma wrote: post #30
AngryData wrote: post #16

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…

That just indicates that metal recycling is super advantageous, to be profitable even with the abnormally low price of energy.

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

#46

Post by ip26 »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #26

It's important to bring up the Food Recovery Hierarchy when talking about food waste. Composting is not the least desirable outcome, but it is close. We really need to focus on the higher priority reduction methods: https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recover...

This seems like a ridiculous chart. First of all, no homeless people or animals want to eat leaf litter, moldy vegetables, or coffee grounds. Second of all, the only inputs to my garden are water, sunlight, and compost, so as far as I'm concerned composting garden scraps is net zero at worst.

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

#47

Post by ip26 »

benj111 wrote: post #8

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

I always want to know where that's measured. Presumably it includes food that went bad in the fridge, and food that was thrown away from the plate. But does it also include apple cores, animal bones, coffee grounds, onion peels, citrus rinds, banana peels, and so on & so forth? In a perfect world we'd make more soup stock, zest, and marmalade but I think compost is a pretty reasonable path for carrot tops and potato eyes.

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

#48

Post by newnewpdro »

thatcat wrote: post #34
newnewpdro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies composting food waste is only slightly better than landfill, which is obviously absurd. Illustrating that the next best existing option after composting is landfill, says nothing of the delta separating the two on the efficacy axis. It only speaks to a lack of altnernatives separating composting and landfill. I'd argue that burying your food waste in any land that food will potentially be grown in is inf…

There is a high loss to atmosphere/runoff on burying your food in the soil for recovering it later as available fertilizer nutrients.

There is 100% loss of what's sent to the landfill, while consuming energy to move it there.

On my property in particular, runoff is not an issue (desert). From what I've seen there's mostly increased insect activity in the compost area. I view it as more generally increasing the fertility of the area from waste using minimal effort.

Most of it is consumed by other lifeforms before I grow anything there. But those lifeforms are residents of my land and will continue to multiply (and die) here. Their increased activity effectively locks up the resources and I can leverage that with a large garden when time permits.

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

#49

Post by linuxftw »

newnewpdro wrote: post #27
linuxftw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people don't eat leftovers. In some cases it's cheaper to buy 5 lbs of something and throw out 2 pounds than to pay for 3 1-lb packages. Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates. This is all a symptom of a distorted market place. Food's too cheap thanks to subsidized farming.

I don't think we have to look further than the convenience culture to explain the behavior. It's not, in my experience, economical at all. The people I see wasting food are being very wasteful of their money in the process, they're just being stupid and careless.

Well, I'd argue, it's because they can afford to. Most people don't throw away relatively more expensive items. If a pound of meat cost $30, would people be so careless with it?

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

#50

Post by luhn »

peteradio wrote: post #40

My neighbors probably hate me but I compost all my food in the backyard. Last year was the first year we did it overwinter when the compost isn't even active and it also was the first year we didn't have mice in the house.

I know you're probably joking, but for the sake of anybody reading this who may be consider composting: A healthy compost doesn't smell bad (I honestly kind of like the smell) and doesn't smell strongly either, so neighbors won't mind or even know it's there. I compost in my small patio; there's table and chairs just a couple feet from the composter and it hasn't been a problem.
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