I’ll have to admit, Professor Webster has a point. Food is so abundant in the western world that household trashbins are routinely stuffed with uneaten food. Now If I can just get my mind around eating more leftovers. – Anthony
A painless way to achieve huge energy savings: Stop wasting food
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2010 — Scientists have identified a way that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year — without spending a penny or putting a ding in the quality of life: Just stop wasting food. Their study, reported in ACS’ semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that it takes the equivalent of about 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare, preserve and distribute a year’s worth of food in the United States.
Michael Webber and Amanda Cuéllar note that food contains energy and requires energy to produce, process, and transport. Estimates indicate that between 8 and 16 percent of energy consumption in the United States went toward food production in 2007. Despite this large energy investment, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that people in the U.S. waste about 27 percent of their food. The scientists realized that the waste might represent a largely unrecognized opportunity to conserve energy and help control global warming.
Their analysis of wasted food and the energy needed to ready it for consumption concluded that the U.S. wasted about 2030 trillion BTU of energy in 2007, or the equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil. That represents about 2 percent of annual energy consumption in the U.S. “Consequently, the energy embedded in wasted food represents a substantial target for decreasing energy consumption in the U.S.,” the article notes. “The wasted energy calculated here is a conservative estimate both because the food waste data are incomplete and outdated and the energy consumption data for food service and sales are incomplete.”
| Percentage of Various Foods Wasted in the U.S. | |
|---|---|
| Fats and oils | 33% |
| Dairy | 32% |
| Grains | 32% |
| Eggs | 31% |
| Sugar and other caloric sweeteners | 31% |
| Vegetables | 25% |
| Fruit | 23% |
| Meat, poultry, fish | 16% |
| Dry beans, peas, lentils | 16% |
| Tree nuts and peanuts | 16% |
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/abs/10.1021/es100310d
ACS’ Environmental Science and Technology “Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States”
CONTACT:
Michael Webber, Ph.D.
Mechanical Engineering
Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712
Phone: 512- 475-6867
Fax: 512- 471-1045
Email: webber@mail.utexas.edu
The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Afaik lots of the waste is used in animalfood, so one should take that into account. I guestimate that actual real loss is quite smaller.
petrossa, are you sure about that? In the UK a lot of human food discard that is perfectly suitable for pigs, hens or other omnivorous farm animals, cannot be given to them any more because of draconian health and safety rules. Does the US have a similar problem?
Huth
Trouble is, most agriculture is a one-way trip. The small farmer (and even the average citizen) is far and long removed from the small farm/garden. Compost the leftovers, or feed them to the dog/chickens/pigs (who deposit back to the land).
Compostables don’t belong in the landfill, they belong back in the farm/garden.
It’s only a matter of habit and commercial structure. I.E. – behavioral change.
Oops, nothing to tax. Move along.
True. A very good point. But don’t eat too much, as you’ll get fat. I prefer to cook few food; if it is not enough, we just eat some fruit for desert. Now I’m quite good as to cooking only what’s absolutely needed… And if too much gets left, it will back into the micro-oven…
Ecotretas
Well, there are starving children everywhere and even malnourished obese. The flip side of not wasting food is guilt based overconsumption. However, there are the usual low hanging fruit, likely making it easy trying not to waste 10% of our food. Ooops, better some other number.
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In Vietnam, when the war was going on, the garbage from the messhall (military term for a cafeteria for those who are clueless ) was carried out to the surrounding villages in armed trucks, where it was then collected by the locals. There was never a shortage of people to empty the trucks for scraps of whatever, and it was common for fights to break out over the best stuff. People in the “developed world” should spend some time in a war zone just for the education it provides.
Eat your peas. No pressure . . . . no pressure at all.
It takes knowledge to use all foodstuff, and it takes time to do it. After a few decades of cooking I’ve learnt to reuse, say, a flavoured oil when frying something else the days after. But less skilled cooks will end up with something rather not-so-tasty when reusing leftovers. It also takes time because most of the time the only way to reuse leftovers is by actually making some new: i.e. cooking. Quite a few of my acquaintances simply don’t have the time for it and throw lots away.
While I find it an environmentally sound practise, the idea that every stressed businessman, double working family or freshman can reuse leftovers is far fetched.
Food is organic, if we don’t eat it, bacteria will. I don’t see the difference. These useless studies always revolve around reinforcing the idea that:
1) there is a climate problem that needs to be solved.
2) we must become more green, in all aspects.
3) the solution always leads to using less energy, which normalizes the concept of cap your income and traded it away (cap and trade).
In my house, food tends to become ‘wasted’ the moment I prepare or cook it – because I have a bad habit of making more than I need (Eyes Bigger Than Belly Syndrome). The answer isn’t so much to “eat more leftovers,” but rather to avoid creating those leftovers in the first place.
The goal is to live as well as you can, for as long as you can. This seems to have fallen out of favor among the Environmental Illuminati, but every life form on the planet follows that same rule. If one is unwilling to compete on that basis, then one might as well put a gun to ones head and get it over with.
I have a few questions though:
It seems fair that growing/prodution costs are proportioned in relation to the final wastage, but what is the difference in energy use to transport to wholesale, slaughter/process, wrap (including packaging and manufacturing packaging), retail, transport home, prepare and cook if you have 30% wastage or zero%.
To buy that bit of grissly meat from teh market, bring it home in your car/SUV, barbeque it, cut the grissle and dispose of on the compost – I can’t see the savings
Am I little retarded green-wise?
Andy
PS I also seem to recollect a viral calculation from a year ago or so, that the carbon footprint of a McDonalds Cheeseburger including the wheet/bread, meat(?), dairy, salads, sauces, salt, packaging, transport, outlet overheads (heating, lighting, cooking etc) when all added up was equal to running a small SUV for a day
“The scientists realized that the waste might represent a largely unrecognized opportunity to conserve energy and help control global warming.”
If all i have to do to avoid being blown up is to eat my leftover food, we can talk.
The Air Force Academy used to take the leftovers from the dining hall and deliver them to the local hog operations. But what’s the worry? Landfilling food simply sequesters all the carbon and solar energy that went into making it.
Since those early days, I’d managed to sequester 40 lbs of food myself, but with military discipline I’ve managed to unload about 25 of it.
To make bioduel out of corn is a stupid idea.
To let left-overs turn into gas is a better idea.
I’ll have to admit, Professor Webster has a point.
I agree with you Anthony.
Their analysis of wasted food and the energy needed to ready it for consumption concluded that the U.S. wasted about 2030 trillion BTU of energy in 2007
I’ve never been big on energy conservation. If people like to have a toasty warm house in the winter I don’t care. And if people have a house covered with lights at Christmastime I don’t care too. They’re the ones paying the bill. Being comfortably warm in winter and enjoying Christmas isn’t wrong. People shouldn’t have to always be in some form of misery.
But I hate waste. And a sinful amount of food is wasted in America. I never thought of the waste of energy associated with it.
This is a very good post! Thanks Anthony! 🙂
I’m not sure if they’re saying that the leftover food should be burned in waste-to-energy plants, or that if we only bought the amount we were going to consume, then the world could produce less food.
The first idea isn’t new, and the second is far fetched. How many families can gauge exactly how much food to buy, cook and eat? And assuming they could do this, that would lead to surply of food exceeding demand, and a consequent drop in food prices. And this would lead to – an increase in food consumption; Jevon’s paradox.
I’ve got a pair of magpies living in my garden, so I recycle my leftovers into magpie protein. They are natural scavengers and will happily eat practically anything I can eat. I realize this will not be directly applicable in North America where magpies only occur in the west and are much less confiding than in Europe, but why not make more Blue Jays instead?
haha. those figures are laughable.
thanks, anthony.
If you want to reduce the energy and environmental consequences associated with food production you focus on the losses in storage and transport. By some estimates as much as 50% of our food is lost in storage to decomposition and insects. The losses once reaching the consumer is minimal compared to the harvest, storage and transport losses. Irradiation could potentially solve a very large piece of this puzzle and in fact might be one of the most cost effective strategies to improve the quality of our environment and our health (think Ecoli). Irradiation could take a large section of the world’s land surface out of agricultural and put it back to “wild” uses, increase the food supply, reduce the cost of food, reduce nonpoint sources of pollution and reduce runoff energy. Environmental groups as usual are opposed to irradiation. The cynical side me asks-Its not about fixing things- its about blaming people isn’t it?
I think the key here is frugality, a quality that perhaps many have gotten away from. Throwing food away is throwing money away, never mind the energy. But, it takes effort, and yes, work to be efficient food-wise, and in every other aspect of our lives.
I have heard that one way people waste food is by buying things in bulk, like at Sam’s Club, thinking they will be saving money, but once that container is opened its shelf life can decline pretty rapidly, depending on the food item. There may in fact be more of a tendency to use more than needed, wasting it that way.
I don’t believe we need to have the Green Police out telling us to eat our peas or else, but certainly education can’t hurt. And the rationale has to be about saving money, not saving the planet.
…”The scientists realized that the waste might represent a largely unrecognized opportunity to conserve energy and help control global warming.”
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Doubling up on the guilt trips, eh.
Note: the intended audience has stopped listening, and started thinking for themselves. Fair warning.
Supermarkets must also shoulder some of the blame for food waste. Buy one – Get one free offers and large ‘tempting’ discounts on bigger packs all put pressure on consumers to buy more than needed. Products are often sold with short ‘Use by’ life – again often with a big price reduction.
Would be better if food was not wasted, but with the pace of modern life, working couples and limited leisure time fuelling the growth of convenience foods it not surprising that much food is wasted – it is a sign of a thriving and wealth society, as is the growth of obesity amongst population of the developed world. 🙂
Due to, er, financial pressures, we’ve reduced food shopping substantially and cut out a lot of wastage. We’re buying less, cooking less, and throwing less away. We eat smaller meals. Still hungry? Eat an apple. We’re much healthier.
The key has been to make better use of local shops, which thankfully are still plentiful in our area and are very close by. It is easy to pop in on the way home a couple of days a week and buy enough (and only enough) for specific meals. It has opened my eyes to how much we wasted before and I wouldn’t go back to our old ways.
A friend of mine is a school volunteer. He says the poor kids usually toss their milk and fruit unopened and un touched.