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 “The wasted energy calculated here is a conservative estimate both because the food waste data are incomplete and outdated and the energy consumption data for food service and sales are incomplete.”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.
Ecotretas says:
October 3, 2010 at 11:45 am
“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…”
Cheapskate Larry agrees. I’m reasonably good at listening to my body’s messages about what, when (when I’m physically hungry–duh), and how much to eat.
Example. I usually include a 4-oz (113 g) burger in my second meal of the day. On some days, it’s barely enough, but usually it’s not. On most days, after I’ve eaten my burger, I need to nosh on some white Cheddar until my Protein Jones is satisfied. To me, white Cheddar tastes great straight, and when I’ve had enough, I put it back into the frig. (I have slightly higher than usual protein requirements, because of the strength training I do for my upper legs.) The upshot: I don’t waste perfectly good beef.
47 comments and no one has raised the important issue on energy. While we need to minimize waste, there will be organic matter that can be turned into energy. Its true that corn ethanol is just welfare for ADM and other large corporations.
But, there is a way of dealing with food waste that is environmental and adds to our energy supply. It is anerobic digestion of green waste, food grease, municipal green, waste, manure, and food processing wastes. If my memory hasn’t totally failed, 10-15% of California’s energy can be produced from biomass and anerobic digestion is the best method. Green waste and food waste are mixed is a large tank without oxygen to produce methane. The methane is best injected into the natural gas pipeline but the gas could run a generator locally. After the one-two week process completes, there is a rich organic mix of solids and liquids that can be returned to the field. This doesn’t make Monsanto very happy but it is good for the soil.
Besides Monsanto, the hedge funds don’t want loan money for this and the Green movement (especially the Sierra Club) is opposed because the green waste isn’t composted. There has been the growth of a composting religion that stands in the way of turning the green/food waster to energy before the organic residue results. In fact, San Francisco is trucking its green waste 100+ miles to the central valley or Napa to compost the material rather than using large tanks at SFO to generate renewable electricity for the airport.
A couple of months ago, we met with a developer from Texas that was trying to sell us 1 million mmBTU’s of biogas from a dairy each year. The price was high and getting it too California added to the expense. That amount of gas would run a two 8 MW turbine or reciprocating engines year round.
Verity Jones says:
October 3, 2010 at 4:34 pm
“Working for the food industry opened my eyes to waste in a big way. So much ‘quality’ is dependant on uniform shape and size that vast quantities of produce never even leave the farm or are sent as animal food, when it is perfectly edible.”
That’s true most of the time, but there’s an important exception.
Q: Do you know why pears of a given variety are more uniform in size, color, and shape than most other fresh fruit?
A: Pear-group pressure. 🙂
[Warning: For that one you’re banned for life. Or for the next 15 minutes, whichever comes first. ~dbs]
Re: Keith Minto and compost.
Add a worm farm and then all kitchen scraps that are vegetable are eaten in days. Worm juice and the castings are wonderful for plants.
We use leftovers by creating another dish, usually by cooking rice as an accompaniment and making a sauce of some sort.
There is prolific food waste from households and retail outlets, especially fast-food and grocery stores. Although some regions in the US attempt organic recycling of household wasted food, it is difficult to implement and enforce, and composting sites are often plagued by odors, flies, rodents and other pests. We simply over-buy at our big-box stores and suffer the consequences….no corner green-grocers or fish mongers as in Britain.
The food processing industries, by contrast, do a very good job of minimizing wasted food products. They recognize that the best value is obtained from some product that ends up in a human’s mouth, so their QC, product salvage and waste minimization procedures are impressive.
At Kraft Foods, nearly nothing was lost from the natural cuts cheese department (Champaign, IL, largest food plant in the world at the time). If it didn’t make it into a cellophane package, the cheese ended up as processed cheese or other product. Cheese that fell onto the floor was picked up dry & recycled as animal food, and even inedible cheese (floor drain recovery) was used for pet food.
This is a very good book on the subject, one of my papers was cited as a reference:
Michael L. Westendorf, Ph.D. et.al. in “Food Waste to Animal Feed,” ISBN 0-8138-2540-7.
One thing I would like to see ended is the two-for-one offer at the Supermarket. Or the three-for-a-pound etc. So much is bought on impulse that was never wanted in the first place. (and it never seems to be on food that keeps well)
Anthony– “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.”
And your point is? Excess food means we are on the safe, healthy and positive side of the food supply. And we should be very happy we are. So how much less food should we grow so as not to waste? Must I rush home because if I don’t drink my milk tonight it will spoil. What if tonight I just don’t feel like eating that brocolli? Who is going to control this-how do we use this information? How – considering it takes several months to produce the crops -is the producer to know how much to grow given variable demands and the vagaries of weather so as not to produce a surplus? Does this mean we should regulate or prevent growing certain crops because they use “more” energy? What are the risks that by growing less to prevent waste we don’t grow enough? Whether food goes bad in my refrigerator or is unsold in the market it is pretty much the same from an energy standpoint.
If one wants to solve the “problem” – irradiate the food supply -a proven technology known to be safe and effective that can materially improve food security. It would also have massive side benefits to both environmental quality, human health, price and energy conservation. Not only does irradiation reduce the massive losses in storage and transportation it allows the food to stay on our shelf longer before we need to throw it out. An irradiated strawberry after 18 days at 10C is still free of mold, sweet and tasty. A non-irradiated strawberry after 3 days at the same temp is if not inedible certainly unsaleable. One would guess if our perishable produce had 6 times the shelf life we would throw away less solving this Prof’s concern.
I was in Asia several years ago when the first food riots broke out due in large part to what bio-fuels have done to food prices in the 3rd world. If you think ideological energy regulation is a concern-consider the 50 + million dead caused by Stalin and Mao’s ideological food programs to see where this type of thinking can go. This paper is pure propaganda and for those that have never been hungry– a heads up-it is very dangerous propaganda.
I have little respect left for academia.
Phil’s Dad says: at 8:06 pm
“ (and it never seems to be on food that keeps well) ”
Okay Dad, think about that for a second.
Surely, denizens of WUWT must appreciate that, like glaciers that are either retreating or advancing, sea levels that are either rising or falling and ice ages that are either receding or approaching, over-production of food is inevitable if you want to avoid under-production.
Our good friend, the weather (or is that climate?), is obviously constantly interfering with plans to raise just the right amount of food, but there are many, many other factors that confound such attempts, not least the fact that what would be best for the industry is not necessarily what would be best for the individual producer. When there’s a glut of broccoli, any one farmer’s best option is to produce as much as he possibly can, so as to be able to stay in the race. Form a co-op or a cartel and then you’re in collusion.
Pat Moffitt,
Maybe, I’m your echo. Even down to the broccoli!
My parents grew up in UK during WW2 when food was rationed because of its lack of availability. They learnt to treat it as a precious resource and to waste as little as they could. And they were good enough to pass on their knowledge to me.
It isn’t difficult – just buy what you can immediately envisage using. Make a list of what you need before you go to the supermarket, and buy only that – plus an occasional treat. If you can’t use something immediately – stick it in the freezer..and remember to look there every now and then rather than to go shopping.
Don’t be easily seduced by advertising….I assume that you are sentient human beings as much able to make your own decisions when shopping as you can when driving or working or any other activity.
In UK it has been estimated that one third of all food bought is eventually thrown away. Another way to look at it is that for every £100 spent on grub, you throw away £33. So in an hour at Tesco or Aldi or Waitrose or Fortnum’s, by being sensible, you can ‘win’ yourself £33. Sounds like a deal to me!
Lars, I like your point. I would go further: people who can’t find the time not to waste food also can’t find the time to think. That’s the real issue and why misinformation gets as far as it does before someone says, hey wait a minute….
My local council has started to compost waste food and sell it back to the wasters to grow their flowers in. Good idea. Maybe it will get to the US sometime.
@Patrick Guinness moffit
‘And your point is? Excess food means we are on the safe, healthy and positive side of the food supply. And we should be very happy we are. So how much less food should we grow so as not to waste? Must I rush home because if I don’t drink my milk tonight it will spoil. What if tonight I just don’t feel like eating that brocolli?’
Alternatively one might posit that anybody who is unable to plan ahead to buy the right amount of one of the basic necessities of life is not very good at planning. And wilful waste ‘just because you can’ as you teeter on advocating is just plain wrong..or arrogant..or both.
Years ago there was a system of recycling food in the form of compost in the netherlands. Organic matter was collected separately in garbage collection. After about 5 years or so they got stuck with a mountain of compost so big they send out ad’s that one could collect as much as wanted for free. Evidently not many takers in regard to the 1000’s of tons of compost. So the organic food recycling was scrapped.
As for industrial waste, all organic matter is processed into animalfeed. As a working student i did some dirty jobs, but the most disgusting was working the offal container for a slaughterhouse. Everything remotely digestible went in there, including dead pets collected from vet’s. The resulting mess was send of to an animal foodplant. Dogfood, cattelefeed, chickenfeed etc.
Maybe on a household basis food gets wasted, but nowhere near the remarkably unscientific numbers presented in the paper.
Latimer Alder says: And wilful waste ‘just because you can’ as you teeter on advocating is just plain wrong..or arrogant..or both.
I offer a plan (irradiation) that can reduce the amount of land needed by agriculture by 25 to 50% while also reducing the cost of food and improving health. It cuts down waste on every step in the production and consumption chain. And once it reaches the end consumer- it allows for those “less planning perfect” to to have more days to decide on eating that last bit of brocolli. Or how about lets stop turning corn into fuel..Or subsidizing rice crops grown in an American desert which we don’t eat and dump on 3rd world markets or preventing the higher yield potentials of GM crops. I just can’t take anyone seriously that talks about the energy balance in ag production and doesn’t as a first step promote irradiation, GM, stop ethanol and the subsidizing of crops we don’t want.
And where did you get that figure for throwing away 30% of the food we buy? I’ld bet a lot that consumers in the US don’t throw away anywhere near 30% of their produce.
So how much is your “better planning” going to save in terms of energy, chemicals, soil loss and land opportunity costs? And please- I did not advocate the wanton wasting of food. But do “teeter” at the general hypocrisy that offers solutions that at best will have minimal impact while ignoring solutions that address the problem through the entire cycle.
But I guess if we did make the food production system more efficient you would not be able to scold us lesser mortals on our sinful ways.
My wife is good at cooking great meals from left overs. What we have left the dog has.
We are trying, in the UK, to get people to waste less. throwing money into the rubbish bin is a stupid idea. But perhaps, since we are no longer allowed to feed food waste to pigs as swill, due to Health and Safety theories, we do not have the infrastructure to cope with this. Bio-digesters are good at converting this waste to methane, to heat directly or produce electricity, so this may be the way to go on a small scale for a household. What is left from the digester can be used as garden compost. I expect there will be environmental issues with this.
I just read the paper cited in this study that found 27% food waste. This figure is for commercial and institutional settings and includes food spilled, failed preparations and failing to project how many meals would be requested on any given day as well as losses from insect infestation. These institutions also have restrictions on what they can put back in storage.
The number used for the homeowner is up to 6% waste made up by food not prepared, spillage, portions prepared but uneaten and is pushed to 6% level in homes with small children (My parenting days saw anything less than 50% of the food on the floor, me,the baby, walls and furniture as a victory) So Latimer perhaps you need to scold your fellow Brits about their profligate waste of food— seems we “teeterers” are doing a damn fine job considering you tell us you are throwing away 5 times the food compared to us Yanks.
It seems to me that very little could be done to improve on the 6% number waste— I see that as a minimum safety factor in the production feedback.
So with this information in hand we can’t get rid of this waste to any meaningful degree– especially the instutional losses.
When I was very small we had, besides a “trash can” on the back porch, a “garbage can” set into the ground at the bottom of the back steps. You opened it by stepping on a small pedal. Several times a week a local pig farmer would stop by and empty it.
The pig farms were usually smelly. They were therefore set outside the larger cities. In the Boston area they were in the exact location where the more wealthy suburbs now reside. (Towns like Weston and Lincoln.)
As a boy I watched the wealthy people move in and the pig farmers move out. As a radical teenager I called the wealthy people “the new pigs.”
Pigs are really easy to raise, and the smell is greatly reduced if one takes the time to clean pens on a regular basis. If the wealthy are really concerned about wasting food, I suggest every wealthy suburb’s neighborhood raise a pig or two.
The problem is that pigs are such cheerful and jaunty creatures that the tender-hearted just about have nervous breakdowns when the family pigs are sent off to be slaughtered. However fresh, home-raised pork-chops are so much better than mass-produced pork that even the tender-hearted usually get over their grief.
The problem is a city thing. Anything biodegradable or combustable (i.e. not metal or plastic) at my hacienda either gets tossed on the ground where it becomes food for bacteria, plants, and animals or into the fireplace for heat, light, and enjoyment.
I’m also thinking of renaming my two dogs to Prewash Boy and Prewash Girl. Any food scrap, no matter how small, left on a plate after a meal is over will quickly disappear if the plate is moved from the table to the floor. One needs to work with nature rather than work around it. That isn’t always possible in urban environments. Man wasn’t meant to live in concrete jungles.
I’d like to see a better definition of ‘waste’.
Currently it includes inedible parts, egg shells, banana skins etc, even chicken carcass after being boiled for stock.. Nearly all my domestic food waste is not edible. And what do orange juice manufacturers do with all the peel – is that ‘food waste’??
cheers David
I have never seen hunger in my life, but my parents and grandparents had. There was severe famine in the besieged Budapest (the siege lasted for 102 days from first contact to capture) and in the months after the country was taken. Believe me, in times like that not a scrap of food gets wasted.
The memory of mass starvation is a lasting one. The sheer emotional stress in the whispered voice of elders while talking about the horrors of starvation is enough to leave an indelible trace in the youthful mind. I still get nervous on seeing food getting wasted and could not help but pass on some of this trait to my own kids.
That said, being in a position to be able to afford some waste is desirable, forced frugality in handling food is a sure sign of misery.
Food security is more important than people realize and having some excess is one of the devices by which it can be attained. The security bought may well worth the expenses.
Food is a special commodity, for as soon as the population is denied of its consumption for several months, its very market gets destroyed. Dead people are neither able to make money nor to rebuild anything. Remembrance of the post war misery is still lingering over Europe, playing a decisive part in defining peculiarities of European agricultural policy.
There is no upper limit to the price of food. If it gets a scarce resource, people will pay anything to get it, wealth is thoroughly redistributed in no time. The free market is simply inadequate to handle such a situation properly.
During the war Britain lived under the continuous threat of famine due to lack of self sufficiency and ongoing destruction of her shipping capacity, even if it had never materialized, at least not on British homeland. Bengal (present day Bangladesh and Indian state of West Bengal) is another story. As part of the British Empire of that time, they have seen a severe market-induced famine in 1943-44, killing off several million.
Starvation in the British Empire might have been bad, but it was worse in post war Germany, or rather the stateless region under military rule once called the Third Reich. In 1945-47 food availability was insufficient, during that time for seven months daily rations were decreased to as low as 1280 kcal/capita, resulting in 1.5 million dead and a 60% infant mortality rate.
Hunger is not a third world thing, not even restricted to war zones. The last time the old Hungarian Kingdom has seen starvation due to natural causes was in 1816, the year without summer, aftermath of Tambora explosion. That time some twenty thousand people were starved to death in Transylvania.
As for now, world food reserves being at an all time low, any disturbance of the market can bring about a price explosion. The most likely scenario is a major volcanic eruption somewhere in the tropics, followed by global cooling and worldwide crop failures. Such an event could easily evoke a famine of epic proportions, unprecedented in human history so far, with hundreds of millions, even billions dead.
In face of such dangers present day waste can be considered an emergency resource, should circumstances deteriorate, it can easily draw the margin between life and death.
@Verity Jones
Just wanted to say that I’ve bookmarked and am now following your blog. I advise others to give it a gander, too.
Nice comments.
Mark
Phil’s Dad says:{October 3, 2010 at 8:06 pm}
“One thing I would like to see ended is the two-for-one offer at the Supermarket. Or the three-for-a-pound etc. So much is bought on impulse that was never wanted in the first place. (and it never seems to be on food that keeps well)”
C’mon, put your thinking cap on. Why would a retail outlet, whose purpose is to make a profit, give away stuff? Cause they are overstocked and need to move the merchandise.
Major food stores order what they expect to sell well in advance so when an item doesn’t move as fast as predicted they must make room for the new shipment of the same item. Bad news for the store’s profit margin, good news for consumers. These sales are also used as “leader” sales, to entice people to come into the store. Once in the store a person will usually buy all of what they need even if some of the items are slightly higher than their normal store rather than taking the time and inconvenience to go somewhere else to save a few pennies. Good for the store’s profit margin, bad for the consumer. The trick is to balance the two ideas to take advantage of the two for ones and not to pay the higher prices for everything else.
Wasting food saves lives. If you don’t waste food, then, in a year of poor harvests, you starve. Producing more food than we can eat gives us a vital margin against disaster. Trying to eliminate “over-production” and “waste” would be foolish in the extreme.
Not sure I want to raise my head above the parapet here, but……. We, here in the UK and the rest of Europe, have massive taxes on petrol/diesel/gas and our food is pretty expensive too, mostly for that reason. It does make you think a bit more carefully when shopping (although cleaning products seem to make my supermarket bills rocket) – it is partly for that reason that I grow our vegetables (the other part for taste and lack of pesticides). I also notice that I don’t pick as many vegetables for a meal because I want to eke out the crop for as many meals as possible so I waste less that way. In a supermarket I’m more inclined to grab a large handful knowing I can’t come back for more if I haven’t got enough whereas with homegrown I can nip out into the garden and get a few more if necessary. Gluts are interesting – my freezer is full of tomato soup/sauce and the jam cupboard full of apple jelly in various guises, plum jam and blackberry jam.
I digress…perhaps a hike in US petroleum taxes might make a dent in food purchasing/waste?
Ok, I’m diving for cover now!