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60% 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 rotti

60% 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 ago
  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.
  - 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.)
    - azernik 8y ago
      That just indicates that metal recycling is super advantageous, to be profitable even with the abnormally low price of energy.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      A lot of natural gas is stranded or considered a waste product of oil production. So fertilizer plants in those areas suck up that cheap CH4 to reform it into H2 and heat up the Haber-Bosch process to make ammonia and then into more transportable fertilizers like urea.
    - emj 8y ago
      You place aluminium plants where the energy is cheap e.g. Iceland, it is often cheap because it's hard to export energy.
- ajross 8y ago
  > If it requires less fuel than the Haber-Bosch process, then why is it not profitable? That was clearly intended as a zing, but it just shows you aren't thinking about this right. Conventional ammonia production is vastly less efficient than just composting your garbage. Be real here. Bacteria literally do the job at a labor cost of zero and all you need to do is keep it in a stable environment. What hurts is what always hurts: scale. If the composting facility is across town, you also need to haul the biomass around and haul the fertilizer back. If the industry is tooled up to spread pellet fertilizer it's going to see an immediate cost moving to equipment that can spread and till compost. But stop pretending that there's an "efficiency" argument to baking nitrogen into ammonia in a 20 barr, 500C pressure cooker. That's nonsense.
  - foota 8y ago
    I felt like the parent was asking the question not as a zing but an earnest question.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      I'm a deep green (I don't eat meat, I don't fly, I don't drive), but I'm also a skeptical green. There is an overwhelming presumption that recycling must be good for the environment, but the evidence is often weak or nonexistent. I'd be more than happy to support food waste recycling if someone can provide good evidence that it actually is environmentally beneficial. The classic example is plastic versus re-usable glass bottles - plastic nearly always proves to be more sustainable than glass, because glass bottles require vastly more energy to manufacture, they're much heavier to transport, they require surprisingly large amounts of energy to wash and they have relatively short average lifespans. The plastic waste issue is quite effectively solved by just burning it - plastic waste is a perfectly good hydrocarbon fuel. http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doorstep%2029%2001%2010%20(2).pdf http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doo...
      - benj111 8y ago
        "someone can provide good evidence that it actually is environmentally beneficial" I don't think anyone is, just that its less bad than the alternatives. You don't drive, presumably you walk or cycle then. Each of those activities have negative environmental externalities compared to not doing them, after all you have to consume extra calories. So while each is infinitely better than driving, they aren't environmentally beneficial. With your plastic v glass example, you seem to be using sustainability in a way that I wouldn't recognise, to me sustainability is about how long you can keep doing something regardless of how much energy it requires (up to a point, and assuming clean energy sources). The glass is infinitely recyclable, the plastic isn't. Especially when burned, so I would say the glass is sustainable.
hopler 8y ago
What percentage of fossil fuel consumption is that? How does food per capita compare to transportation (caets) per capita, in terms of fossil fuel use? Does converting fossil fuels into food fertilizer cause pollution? Transfering waste from an oilfield to a landfill isn't inherently unecological.

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 ago
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.
- 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.)
  - azernik 8y ago
    That just indicates that metal recycling is super advantageous, to be profitable even with the abnormally low price of energy.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    A lot of natural gas is stranded or considered a waste product of oil production. So fertilizer plants in those areas suck up that cheap CH4 to reform it into H2 and heat up the Haber-Bosch process to make ammonia and then into more transportable fertilizers like urea.
  - emj 8y ago
    You place aluminium plants where the energy is cheap e.g. Iceland, it is often cheap because it's hard to export energy.
ajross 8y ago
> If it requires less fuel than the Haber-Bosch process, then why is it not profitable? That was clearly intended as a zing, but it just shows you aren't thinking about this right. Conventional ammonia production is vastly less efficient than just composting your garbage. Be real here. Bacteria literally do the job at a labor cost of zero and all you need to do is keep it in a stable environment. What hurts is what always hurts: scale. If the composting facility is across town, you also need to haul the biomass around and haul the fertilizer back. If the industry is tooled up to spread pellet fertilizer it's going to see an immediate cost moving to equipment that can spread and till compost. But stop pretending that there's an "efficiency" argument to baking nitrogen into ammonia in a 20 barr, 500C pressure cooker. That's nonsense.
- foota 8y ago
  I felt like the parent was asking the question not as a zing but an earnest question.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    I'm a deep green (I don't eat meat, I don't fly, I don't drive), but I'm also a skeptical green. There is an overwhelming presumption that recycling must be good for the environment, but the evidence is often weak or nonexistent. I'd be more than happy to support food waste recycling if someone can provide good evidence that it actually is environmentally beneficial. The classic example is plastic versus re-usable glass bottles - plastic nearly always proves to be more sustainable than glass, because glass bottles require vastly more energy to manufacture, they're much heavier to transport, they require surprisingly large amounts of energy to wash and they have relatively short average lifespans. The plastic waste issue is quite effectively solved by just burning it - plastic waste is a perfectly good hydrocarbon fuel. http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doorstep%2029%2001%2010%20(2).pdf http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doo...
    - benj111 8y ago
      "someone can provide good evidence that it actually is environmentally beneficial" I don't think anyone is, just that its less bad than the alternatives. You don't drive, presumably you walk or cycle then. Each of those activities have negative environmental externalities compared to not doing them, after all you have to consume extra calories. So while each is infinitely better than driving, they aren't environmentally beneficial. With your plastic v glass example, you seem to be using sustainability in a way that I wouldn't recognise, to me sustainability is about how long you can keep doing something regardless of how much energy it requires (up to a point, and assuming clean energy sources). The glass is infinitely recyclable, the plastic isn't. Especially when burned, so I would say the glass is sustainable.

hopler 8y ago

What percentage of fossil fuel consumption is that? How does food per capita compare to transportation (caets) per capita, in terms of fossil fuel use? Does converting fossil fuels into food fertilizer cause pollution? Transfering waste from an oilfield to a landfill isn't inherently unecological.