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(1) it's something they do to make comparisons between countries easier, as different countries have different thoughts on what is/isn't considered edible, and

(1) it's something they do to make comparisons between countries easier, as different countries have different thoughts on what is/isn't considered edible, and also because it's easier to measure (e.g. using a very simple "mass balance" method that looks at the weight of foodstuffs that go in vs. what comes out) (2) the report distinguishes food loss (harvest, initial processing, transport etc.) from food waste (at home, in restaurants and cafetarias) and explicitly discusses only the latter (3) the CO2 stat is just a spiel, there's many other reasons to dislike food waste The report and the development of the index is not misleading at all. On the other hand, the way it was pitched to the media is questionable, and I've got to think that some of the people who worked very hard on this must be rolling their eyes.

ineedasername 6y ago
1) That's a bad justification because right now, all I know is that whatever the amount of emissions that food waste contributes, it is absolutely not 10% They can't just ignore that because ignoring it makes things easy to measure. They don't get to do a bad job just because doing it right is hard. Even a tough estimate to give an upper & lower bound would have been fine. My job it to analyze data & write code in support of that analysis. I don't get to ignore categorical variations or a dozen different edge cases just because a general rule is easier: "Hi boss, it would take 500 more lines of code to get you the correct answer so I skipped that to give you a wrong one instead" I would get fired. 2) I don't think their definition is perfectly clear on exactly where they draw the line between these categories, but either way there is still significant amounts of food that is "wasted" in these end-user locations that actually goes on to be useful in some ways: Many areas of the world routinely compost anything they can and feed it back into the farming ecosystem even after it gets to what this reports calls waste. 3) Sure, but that's not the topic. The fact that food waste is also bad in other ways is no reason to produce a misleading report like this that climate deniers will use as anti-science fodder because, as I said initially, I don't know what the real number is, but I absolutely know it's not what this UN report claims. Criticizing this report doesn't imply someone thinks wasting food is okay. Pointing to other reasons that waste is bad is a rhetorical diversion, nothing more.
- stdbrouw 6y ago
  If you're a data analyst, then surely you must be familiar with (and recognize the usefulness of) proxy variables? If we can easily measure x + e, but not x, then our estimate of x is biased but comparisons of (x1 + e) - (x2 + e) are not biased, and ratios (x1 + e) / (x2 + e) are biased but proportional to the true ratio. What I meant re: the CO2 statistic is that that's only a very, very small part of what the report is about, that unfortunately is getting a lot of attention. You're absolutely right that it's misleading to use this information as a headline, but the report and the associated UN effort is simply about how to reduce food waste, as a part of the sustainable development goals for 2030: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12 https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Of course. A common sentence I have to say to people is "This is not a perfect number, but it's been imperfect in the same way for the last 10 years. As such, you should regard it as merely an approximation for any given year, but also that any trend you see is unlikely a result of those imperfections." This is literally a sentence that I copy & paste almost verbatim into a lot of reports. I'm not allowed to do that sort of thing when the data is reasonably available. The UN could have obtained at least enough data to get an estimate rather than ignoring it completely. The Department of Agriculture in the US and similar organizations all over the world actually provide databases on their specifications for inedible portions of many specific foods. The UN could have at least used the US data alone, along with research showing that food waste in the US tends to be higher than other parts of the world, to place a probable upper-bound on this. I think we can agree there's not a hard & fast rule here about when to use estimates and when to get full (or at least more) data. I sometimes have to impute values where data is available but it would take many hours of someone's time going through countless boxes of documents in cold storage and doing manual data entry with them. If the missing data is small enough or the issue is of low enough importance, I do the best I can. However a recent project of mine did actually involve having a few people go back into those files and get a random sampling of the data so that I could make reasonable estimates. It all comes down to resources & importance. So lets look at this situation through that lens with the UN: Resources? The UN absolutely has them, and this information is neither unavailable nor unreasonably burdensome to gather enough for an estimate. Importance? It doesn't get much more important than a report intended to be used to guide global food & climate policy at the highest levels. The UN department that produced this report has an annual budget around $500 million/year [0], and this is one of their landmark publications: They have the resources, and this is important, they shouldn't have ignored the issue. I also don't think the headlines were unreasonable in leading with that given the report's contents: Literally the first sentence of the report is about the climate impact of food waste. Media often gets science interpretation wrong, but when the first sentence of a report is: "If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions" Given that, I think it's reasonable for reporters to lead with a similar headline. I don't blame the reporters here, or at least it's not where I assign the majority of blame. [0] https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/funding-and-partnerships/funding-facts https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/funding-and-partne...

ineedasername 6y ago

1) That's a bad justification because right now, all I know is that whatever the amount of emissions that food waste contributes, it is absolutely not 10% They can't just ignore that because ignoring it makes things easy to measure. They don't get to do a bad job just because doing it right is hard. Even a tough estimate to give an upper & lower bound would have been fine. My job it to analyze data & write code in support of that analysis. I don't get to ignore categorical variations or a dozen different edge cases just because a general rule is easier: "Hi boss, it would take 500 more lines of code to get you the correct answer so I skipped that to give you a wrong one instead" I would get fired. 2) I don't think their definition is perfectly clear on exactly where they draw the line between these categories, but either way there is still significant amounts of food that is "wasted" in these end-user locations that actually goes on to be useful in some ways: Many areas of the world routinely compost anything they can and feed it back into the farming ecosystem even after it gets to what this reports calls waste. 3) Sure, but that's not the topic. The fact that food waste is also bad in other ways is no reason to produce a misleading report like this that climate deniers will use as anti-science fodder because, as I said initially, I don't know what the real number is, but I absolutely know it's not what this UN report claims. Criticizing this report doesn't imply someone thinks wasting food is okay. Pointing to other reasons that waste is bad is a rhetorical diversion, nothing more.

stdbrouw 6y ago
If you're a data analyst, then surely you must be familiar with (and recognize the usefulness of) proxy variables? If we can easily measure x + e, but not x, then our estimate of x is biased but comparisons of (x1 + e) - (x2 + e) are not biased, and ratios (x1 + e) / (x2 + e) are biased but proportional to the true ratio. What I meant re: the CO2 statistic is that that's only a very, very small part of what the report is about, that unfortunately is getting a lot of attention. You're absolutely right that it's misleading to use this information as a headline, but the report and the associated UN effort is simply about how to reduce food waste, as a part of the sustainable development goals for 2030: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12 https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Of course. A common sentence I have to say to people is "This is not a perfect number, but it's been imperfect in the same way for the last 10 years. As such, you should regard it as merely an approximation for any given year, but also that any trend you see is unlikely a result of those imperfections." This is literally a sentence that I copy & paste almost verbatim into a lot of reports. I'm not allowed to do that sort of thing when the data is reasonably available. The UN could have obtained at least enough data to get an estimate rather than ignoring it completely. The Department of Agriculture in the US and similar organizations all over the world actually provide databases on their specifications for inedible portions of many specific foods. The UN could have at least used the US data alone, along with research showing that food waste in the US tends to be higher than other parts of the world, to place a probable upper-bound on this. I think we can agree there's not a hard & fast rule here about when to use estimates and when to get full (or at least more) data. I sometimes have to impute values where data is available but it would take many hours of someone's time going through countless boxes of documents in cold storage and doing manual data entry with them. If the missing data is small enough or the issue is of low enough importance, I do the best I can. However a recent project of mine did actually involve having a few people go back into those files and get a random sampling of the data so that I could make reasonable estimates. It all comes down to resources & importance. So lets look at this situation through that lens with the UN: Resources? The UN absolutely has them, and this information is neither unavailable nor unreasonably burdensome to gather enough for an estimate. Importance? It doesn't get much more important than a report intended to be used to guide global food & climate policy at the highest levels. The UN department that produced this report has an annual budget around $500 million/year [0], and this is one of their landmark publications: They have the resources, and this is important, they shouldn't have ignored the issue. I also don't think the headlines were unreasonable in leading with that given the report's contents: Literally the first sentence of the report is about the climate impact of food waste. Media often gets science interpretation wrong, but when the first sentence of a report is: "If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions" Given that, I think it's reasonable for reporters to lead with a similar headline. I don't blame the reporters here, or at least it's not where I assign the majority of blame. [0] https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/funding-and-partnerships/funding-facts https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/funding-and-partne...