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South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
- maerF0x0 8y ago> There’s a limit to how much food waste fertilizer can actually be used once upon a time we fed food waste to animals to "recycle" the caloric content. Think table scraps(but not meat) going to pigs or chickens. Would be interesting if we close the loop on this household content Edit: Added note that I meant "vegan" scraps.
- keypress 8y agoStopped in the UK due to BSE, and not being able to audit ingredients. I wonder if cockcroach protein powder would bypass brain wasting disease and other nasties.
- spiderfarmer 8y agoBlack flies and worms are currently tested in The Netherlands. It’s 10 times more expensive vs other protein sources, mostly byproducts from human food production. Dutch source: http://edepot.wur.nl/362233 http://edepot.wur.nl/362233
- benj111 8y agoI believe in China it was common to site toilets over pig stys. Some loop closing isn't a very good idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet
- linuxftw 8y agoGross. Much of the 'compost' you receive at big-box stores is treated human waste: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-biosolids https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-bioso... Not much goes to waste in the USA on an industrial scale.
- vonmoltke 8y ago> Much of the 'compost' you receive at big-box stores is treated human waste: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-biosolids https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/frequent-questions-about-bioso... I don't see anything on that page to support this specific claim.
- mythrwy 8y agoNot "most", but there is milorganite. https://www.milorganite.com/using-milorganite/what-is-milorganite https://www.milorganite.com/using-milorganite/what-is-milorg...
- hanniabu 8y ago> So Milorganite is actually a bag of dried microbes! great marketing
- hopler 8y agoThe page says "Biosolids are treated sewage sludge." Sewage sludge is feces
- thrwwy412947 8y agoGross? Most vegetation sits in shit all day. Shit has been and still is central to the human diet.
- webignition 8y agoAbout 20 years ago I stayed for two weeks on a rural rice farm in Goa. The toilets fed directly into the pig sty. Very directly down a short chute add though a hole. An eager pig snout poked through the hole could make contact. Never before nor never again have I been so startled.
- swombat 8y agoBut... why... Pigs don’t eat human faeces...
- webignition 8y agoI have seen first hand that they do, not that I wish I hadn't.
- avip 8y agoPigs eat everything, including humans.
- ohiovr 8y agoPigs even eat pork. There is currently a problem with swine fever infected pork being reintroduced as feed in places like china. It is one of several vectors for the lethal (to pigs) disease.
- benj111 8y agoWell to be fair, if you were served some nameless meat, would you be confident in your ability to identify human and/ or not like the taste of it? Chickens will eat egg shells, and it's apparently a good source of minerals for them. You do have to scrunch them up, or else, from what I understand, they start associating egg shells with food, and start pecking their own eggs.
- all2 8y agoIts also good to bake them for a bit. It helps with the 'scrunching' and nutrient availability (so I've been told).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nradov 8y agoYes my uncle used to feed almost all food waste to his pigs. Then we ate the pigs. Unfortunately suburban Silicon Valley residents don't appreciate backyard pigs.
- aaronblohowiak 8y agoChicken will eat a lot of table scraps and are backyard friendly in many places
- tomjen3 8y agoChickens will eat almost anything you throw at them.
- aitchnyu 8y agoIs feeding meat to chickens and pigs a bad idea? I get that brain matter could cause prion diseases in cows.
- the_economist 8y agoBefore Haber–Bosch, everyone recycled 100% of their food waste.
- aitchnyu 8y agoAnd countries went batshit crazy - Saltpetre war with Chile vs Bolivia and Peru were fought over caves with bat guano which was the most valuable fertiliser of the day.
- jdietrich 8y ago>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 resources, or is it just a sop to make us feel better about throwing away food? Is this really recycling, or is it a waste of resources at one step removed?
- AngryData 8y ago60% of the world's crop yield is the direct result of fossil fuel derived fertilizers. Recycling food is recycling fossil fuels, otherwise it just ends up rotting into the environment and polluting it just the same as burning the fuels except you aren't doing anything with it if it just rots in a landfill.
- jdietrich 8y ago> Recycling food is recycling fossil fuels How much fuel do you have to burn to turn that waste food into usable nitrates? If it requires less fuel than the Haber-Bosch process, then why is it not profitable?
- AngryData 8y agoOr 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.
- darkpuma 8y ago> " 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. fossil fuels.)
- benj111 8y ago"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???
- altcognito 8y agoFood has a high % of water content and is therefore very heavy.
- remote_phone 8y agoIt’s very easy. At least in the US, portion sizes are too big. If you go to a restaurant it’s profitable for them to increase the size of a meal by 50% and charge 25% more, which looks like a cost savings and value. But then the food ends up being wasted.
- linuxftw 8y agoMany 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.
- benj111 8y ago"Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates" I've worked in a few. As a European I'd say food waste was lower than that. Id expect restaurant food waste to be higher, as they can't personalise portion sizes as effectively, so unless most people eat out most days, I don't see how that could account for all the waste. But apparently it does? I really hope peelings etc are included, because even then there's still a family out there wasting 3kg+ of food/person/wk, just to balance my family out.
- allannienhuis 8y ago
- punnerud 8y agoNorway: 50% of food, 77% of energy in waste, and 97% of toxic waste is recycled. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.avfallnorge.no/bransjen/n%25C3%25B8kkeltall&xid=25657,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700253,15700256,15700259&usg=ALkJrhhGeEjP4WguBQt-gvJq0BA4nJsL6A https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&... We are also rebuilding some of our plants to sort waste with machine learning. The initial tests are really promising. Several of them are already sorting out most plastic using spectrometer-sensors, so we don’t need to do it manually. In combination with the machine learning the tests get it up to 99.9% or higher. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.tu.no/artikler/her-skal-de-bygge-en-av-verdens-mest-avanserte-papirlinjer/453987&xid=25657,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700253,15700256,15700259&usg=ALkJrhgcw40Kc8kLEI75jOZRYcls9JL8Vw https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
- airstrike 8y agoOnce upon a time I came across AMP Robotics[0], a company that also uses ML and robotics for sorting waste. Pretty nifty project, in case you're curious. You can see the robots in action on their website[1] __________ 0. https://www.amprobotics.com/ https://www.amprobotics.com/ 1. https://www.amprobotics.com/amp-cortex https://www.amprobotics.com/amp-cortex
- koolba 8y agoSorting trash maybe useful but sorting Legos is where it’s at! https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/
- Gravityloss 8y agoAlso https://www.zenrobotics.com/ https://www.zenrobotics.com/
- thatwasunusual 8y agoRecycling doesn't help much as long as Norwegians throw away 40-50 kg of food per person each year. :(
- huhwatnow 8y agoBut do they feed it back to the fabricants already ?
- OldHand2018 8y agoIt'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-recovery-hierarchy https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recover...
- newnewpdro 8y agoThis 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 infinitely superior to sticking it in a landfill where food will never be deliberately grown. From my perspective, living on a rural property with an outhouse where all food waste and human waste is buried and eventually grown food from your comment strikes me as ridiculous. I add obvious value to my land burying this waste, it completely escapes reuse, effectively exiting the system, when I put it in the dumpster.
- thatcat 8y agoThere is a high loss to atmosphere/runoff on burying your food in the soil for recovering it later as available fertilizer nutrients.
- newnewpdro 8y agoThere 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.
- peteradio 8y agoMy 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.
- luhn 8y agoI 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.
- OrgNet 8y agoI wonder how much food North Korea waste
- RickJWagner 8y agoThat's awesome! Food waste seems so very easily preventable. Take what you want, but eat what you take. Composting what's left over is an awesome idea.
- Gene_Parmesan 8y agoFood waste is a bigger issue than people putting too much on their plates. One of the highest sources of food waste is in the "manufacturing"/distribution phases -- malformed, misshapen, and otherwise "unsalable" produce is either left unpicked in the fields or rejected by groceries. More waste comes from rejections due to food safety regulations, overproduction, logistical errors resulting in spoilage, and the simple fact of groceries needing to display full bins/shelves of food at all times, even for low-volume products which they can never hope to sell in time. It's like when individuals are made to feel bad over taking a five minute shower instead of a three minute shower, while Nestle is extracting millions of gallons of water without paying a cent for it. Individuals should absolutely do everything they can to reduce their own food waste, and composting is better than nothing, but as a global society we should really be focusing our efforts on the largest sources of waste first.
- benj111 8y agoLet us assume that 90% of food is wasted before consumers even see it. Any reduction in demand has an outsize waste reduction because every kg results in another 9kg not being produced and wasted further up the chain. So yes that 90% headline should definitely be cut, it is our waste, and we should be doing everything we can our end also.
- avip 8y agoMore than 50% of food (quantitive) drops in the supply chain, before arrival on any plate.
- nightski 8y agoIs it no longer waste if it sits on your gut?
- cjensen 8y agoFood used on farms decomposes directly into the atmosphere, including methane. Food sent to landfill decomposes poorly with an increased methane output, but some of the methane can be captured to generate electricity. I'm not qualified at all to analyze this properly. The former method makes use of food to displace use of fossil fuels in farming. The latter displaces use of fossil fuels for electricity generation. Is there research which demonstrates that one method is better than the other?
- oska 8y agoI recently learnt of a food waste recycling method that avoids decomposition and release of methane. It is called bokashi and it uses homolactic fermentation to break down the food waste. Quoting the wikipedia article [1]: > Homolactic fermentation breaks no carbon bonds and emits no gas; its overall equation is C6H12O6 (carbohydrate) → 2 CH3CHOHCOOH (lactic acid). It is a mildly endothermic reaction, emitting no energy; the fermentation vessel remains at ambient temperature. Interestingly, this method was historically developed in Korea, as is also detailed in the wikipedia article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokashi_(horticulture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokashi_(horticulture)
- crazy_monkey 8y agoSonmi-451: "They feed us to ourselves."
- samzevo 8y agoCHECK THIS OUT https://coincircle.com/l/HTgyczkpcY https://coincircle.com/l/HTgyczkpcY https://coincircle.com/l/sfX5us6vcQ https://coincircle.com/l/sfX5us6vcQ
- samzevo 8y agohttps://coincircle.com/l/Q6LtdZDEe4 https://coincircle.com/l/Q6LtdZDEe4
- m3kw9 8y agoThey can make a lot of Kimchi with all that fermentation.
- garfieldnate 8y agoEvery time I ate pork there they always bragged about how it had been fed garbage T_T When I researched it later, it turned out that in the US we stopped feeding leftovers to pigs a long time ago due to health concerns. Laws were passed stipulating that garbage be boiled before being fed to pigs, but that made it too expensive so everyone stopped doing it.
- hw 8y agoHere in the SF Bay Area, some cities have started collecting food waste to be treated and fed to animals. There's been some minor backlash, due to the uncertainties around what goes into the food waste bin and how that gets treated and sorted and eventually processed into animal feed. I'm not aware of the law you mentioned, but it's being done.
- Yuval_Halevi 8y agothat's just insane. I start to see more and more news about countries that understand how crucial it is to recycle.