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 “The wasted energy calculated here is a conservative estimate both because the food waste data are incomplete and outdated and the energy consumption data for food service and sales are incomplete.”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.
@Patrick Guinness moffit
You say ‘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’
I was very careful to state my statistics referred to the UK, and did not make any remarks about habits in any other countries. If it is the case that in your country the figures are so much less, then I am delighted…but it was not the overall figure for waste that prompted my contribution..it was the closeness to the line of glorification of the possibility of wasting food from your earlier remark.
And I would sold anyone from whatever country – UK, US or Martiansville, Vensuland for doing so. It is wrong. Period.
(Or Full Stop as we would correctly have it over here in the Mother Country)
@paul birch
‘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’
Ummm… you’ll have to run that past me again. Your argument is that you grow more than you need, then wilfully let it rot. Because next time there’s a bad harvest you won’t have it to eat?? Surely some mistake here. To parpahrase an old proverb…..you cannot throw away your cake as waste and then come back to eat it. Its gone.
How about..you gorw more than you need for now and carefully store it so that next time there;s a bad harvest, then you still have it to eat until the next good harvest comes around.
Exactly the opposite argument from your specious one ….you treat food as a valuable resource and look after it because you truly don’t know where the next meal is coming from
I don’t think that over-production is the problem, as cited in previous comments. I must say that when I visit the US and have a meal out in a restaurant, I am appalled at the SIZE OF THE PLATE, and the SIZE OF THE SERVINGS of the meal…as well as how inexpensive it is! We eat very well in Canada, and food waste is certainly not unique here, but it’s no wonder my US friends are having increasing weight and health problems due to the amount and frequency of food eaten, along with the choices. In addition, restaurants must display “perfect” food in appearance (as well as safe food), so much of the restaurant waste must be from having to throw own anything that does not meet those requirements, to say nothing about what the suppliers must discard. I’d say that we should start in our own homes to REDUCE SIZE OF SERVINGS, for one thing, and to USE GOOD LEFT-OVERS creatively in healthy and attractive dishes of all kinds. Another issue with all of this are the costs of packaging – unnecessary packaging, for the most part, along with how frustrating it is to get stuff open!!!!! I’ve also found that in the US on my visits, even my family tends to be quite far behind in every aspect of “reduce-reuse-recycle” practices from where we are in a small rural community way up north. EDUCATION IS KEY!
Latimer– where is your indignation that we have not irradiated food, stopped biofuels, championed GM and ceased the subsidization of unwanted crops? Such an approach might save more than 50% of our energy expended on Ag production improving health, food security and the environment in the process. Yet you evoke such righteous indignation towards personal choice that may save little or no energy while introducing a large food security risk. Your logic is akin to ignoring a giant hole in a reservoir’s dam while lecturing people who take showers longer than 2 minutes.
Again I did not glorify wasting food- but having seen hunger- do appreciate surplus. Consider China– white rice is served at the end of a formal meal by the host and is not to be eaten by the guest so as to honor the host for serving enough food. In a country with a history of famine– surplus has great meaning. (Being of Irish descent perhaps I get a bit testy when a Brit lectures me about wasting food. In the 1800s the Brits told the Irish that having ANY food was wasteful.)
And I say again -you either don’t understand the 30% waste figure you cite or are mistaken as to the correct number. There is no way individual consumers in the UK are throwing away 30% of their produce. Remember wasted food has many components and many are beyond the control of the end user. Here is my reference for my claims —-Kantor, L. S.; Lipton, K. “Estimating and addressing America’s food losses” Food Rev. 1997, 20 ( 1) 2 Where’s yours?
IMHO it is those that feel morally superior championing ideas that feel good rather than do good that deserve a good scolding.
@Patrick Guinness moffit
Oh dear, oh Lor! You are getting yourself into a tizz.
I’ve expressed no opinion about the virtues or otherwise of irradiating food. As far as I know I have no opinion about it at all :-). I am not denigrating the idea..if I had time to study it I might well be persuaded that it is the most splendid idea since the invention of sliced bread.
All I was pointing out is that deliberately buying food that you cannot/do not use and that then goes to waste is wrong. Like leaving litter in the street is wrong, blowing up kiddies in 10:10 videos is wrong or knowingly maltreating pet animals is wrong.
Lots of things that people do are wrong…to mention one without producing a comprehensive list of all the others does not imply that they are somehow ‘right’..it just means that they are not hugely relevant to the topic under discussion.
But go ahead…go and buy something tasty (irradiated or not) but just chuck it away without eating it…its your right to do so, And after all it would have been produced anyway whether you bought it or not…so you can feel smugly satisfied that your decision to do so is morally neutral. I just happen to disagree with you. The ‘if I didn’t do it, somebody else would’ train of argument is a slippery slope.
The 30% figure is widely quoted in UK as the amount of domestic food purchased but thrown away. I do not have a source..it may even be anecdotal, but as far as I know nobody has seriously challenged it. So on the basis that it probably ‘feels right’ I suggest that we can use it. Even if it were only 10%, the savings by not buying the stuff in the first place would be substantial.
I also submit that in countries where food shortages are a real and recurrent problem, the husbandry of what little food there is means that the percentage wasted is very close to zero.
PS
@Patrick Guinness moffit
As I share my life with an authentic born and bred Dubliner – with all the fiery temperament and obsession with Irish history that come with her, I am all too familiar with the myths and legends surrounding the famine caused by the potato blight of the mid 1800s.
But it seems a somewhat perverse argument to suggest that because (allegedly) some misguided people made some stupid and ignorant remarks nearly two hundred years ago, that you should take offence at my espousal of exactly the opposite viewpoint.
Go figure.
I was watching a “Modern Marvels” program about carbonated drinks and they ALL use CO2. So we could help stop Global Warming by banning all carbonated drinks. No more coke, pepsi, slurrpies………. for the good of the planet – drink tap water (unless you live in an arid climate where the ground water is being depleted faster than it’s being replenished…..hmmm.
Gosh, another unintended consequence of good intentions.
Latimer– Stop with the straw men as to my position on waste. When did I or anyone else ever claim to buy food for the expressed purpose of wasting it? Setting a goal of zero waste increases the risk of shortages— the information feedback between production and consumption cannot be perfectly known– to promote zero waste will by necessity cause periods of insufficient supply.
You state “I also submit that in countries where food shortages are a real and recurrent problem, the husbandry of what little food there is means that the percentage wasted is very close to zero.” Really? That is your idea of husbandry. In the old Soviet Union more than half of their food rotted in the fields because they did not focus on the problems with their transportation and storage infrastructure. Your correct that people wasted zero food– they ate everything including shoe leather. Its easy to have zero waste when you have zero food to waste. A good thing by your metric- your logic of focusing on the actions of the consumer–or one part of a complex system leads to perverse solutions.
Let me get this straight– you admit not knowing the real “waste” number in UK nor how it was derived–other than what “feels right”- you don’t know where the bulk of waste in the Ag system occurs, you don’t know or feel compelled to understand what other methods may provide infinitely greater system efficiency- haven’t looked at the unintended consequences of your position—but still feel quite comfortable scolding others about their perceived actions.
Latimer– You look at food waste and see a human failing while I see some food waste as a sign we are all being fed and am thankful.
e. c. cowan says:
“So we could help stop Global Warming by banning all carbonated drinks.”
And I think it cuts down on flatulent methane as well!
@Patrick Guinness moffit
‘Latimer– You look at food waste and see a human failing while I see some food waste as a sign we are all being fed and am thankful’
But if the food weren’t wasted, then more people could be properly fed.
I am not at all surprised that there was a huge amount of food that went to waste in the soviet union..it was an incredibly inefficient and stupid economic system. But I doubt very much if what little filtered down to the baboushka with the just-in-case bag was wasted. It was too hard to come by to not get full value from it.
There is absolutely no reason for us as private individuals to emulate the soviet state’s daft behaviour rather than the soviet peasant’s careful use of a valuable resource. You seem to be loudly advocating the former because the potato harvest failed for your great-great-great-great-great grandfather back in Sligo or Galway or wherever. BTW where did your other 127 forebears of that degree come from?
And I’m guessing that you are of the opinion that I am some form of crazed green environmentalist. Far from it – as a study of my postings here and elsewhere will show you.
Aldi says: October 3, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Food is organic, if we don’t eat it, bacteria will. I don’t see the difference.
The difference is that we don’t pay a lot of money and burn a lot of petroleum to ship the food around the world for bacteria. If a bushel of corn rots in the field, the bacteria eat it. If that bushel of corn is harvested/shipped/processed/shipped some more/refridgerated and THEN rots, we have ALSO burned a bunch of fuel and wasted that much more money and energy.
Curiousgeorge says: October 3, 2010 at 12:31 pm
The goal is to live as well as you can, for as long as you can. … every life form on the planet follows that same rule.
Really? Then why do many plants and animals die shortly after reproducing? Surely they could have lived longer by skipping that whole reproduction thing! 😉 It seems that the rule of nature is more like “Help your genes (and your species in general) live as well as they can for as long as they can.”
I am anxious to have a world that I can enjoy AND that my great-grandkids will enjoy. So I am willing to be a good steward of resources now so that there are still plenty of resources for them later.
joe says: October 3, 2010 at 1:37 pm
haha. those figures are laughable.
Which figures? Without being more specific about what it is you find laughable, the rest of is don’t know how to comment. Is there some specific number you disagree with? Do you have evidence as to what the numbers should be?
Tom in Florida says: October 3, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Many posters speak of individual efforts to not waste food. Personally very good but that won’t stop production. You would have to limit food production in order to really save energy and that is not going to happen.
Do you really think so? If consumers bought 20% less beef starting tomorrow becasue they were not throwing so much away, do you think that beef production would not decline almost immediately? Would ranchers truly produce cattle that they could not sell at a profit?
Almost universially, demand drives supply (especially for processed/manufactured stuff), not the other way around.
Pat Moffitt says: October 3, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Whether food goes bad in my refrigerator or is unsold in the market it is pretty much the same from an energy standpoint.
Very true. But as Guido LaMoto said a little earlier, “it’s about wasting petroleum, not food.” See my first comment above.
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.
Sounds like something that should definitely be pursued! I think this is a good idea too.
Latimer– Stop with the straw men as to my position on waste. When did I or anyone else ever claim to buy food for the expressed purpose of wasting it? Setting a goal of zero waste increases the risk of shortages— the information feedback between production and consumption cannot be perfectly known– to promote zero waste will by necessity cause periods of insufficient supply.
Pat, isnt “setting a goal of zero waste” also a strawman? I don’t recall anyone in the above discussions suggest that absolutely zero waste was the goal. It seems the goal is reducing wastes to more reasonable levels is the goal.
Latimer Alder says:
October 4, 2010 at 8:40 am
@paul birch ‘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’
“Ummm… you’ll have to run that past me again. Your argument is that you grow more than you need, then wilfully let it rot. Because next time there’s a bad harvest you won’t have it to eat?? Surely some mistake here. To parpahrase an old proverb…..you cannot throw away your cake as waste and then come back to eat it. Its gone.
How about..you gorw more than you need for now and carefully store it so that next time there;s a bad harvest, then you still have it to eat until the next good harvest comes around.”
If you grow more food than you can use, then you have enough extra food that even with a poor harvest you will still have enough to eat. It is of course eminently sensible also to store supplies of food during the seven good years against the seven bad years. But doing so absolutely requires the over-production of food. And so long as the bad years do not come, this extra food is inevitably wasted. It is stored for a while – and then thrown away. It may be sensible to treat this stored food so that it lasts longer; but it will still be discarded in the end. It is also sensible to have the means to ensure that food can get from farm to table with minimal loss from vermin, mould, etc., but it is not necessarily efficient always to bother using those means when there is a food surplus (because those means have economic costs, of which the capital costs should be duly invested, but some of the running costs may usefully be avoided).
TimF—
Lets take things one step at a time. The posted paper claims that Americans waste 27% of its food citing Kantor, L. S.; Lipton, K. “Estimating and addressing America’s food losses” Food Rev. 1997, 20 ( 1) 2. Most posting here have erroneously assumed that this is the result of the actions of individual end use consumers. The 27% value is for commercial/institutions while a value of 6% (3 to 9%) was given for individuals.
So what is included in these waste numbers? The study states that 50% of the end user “waste” is the disposal of cooking oils following food preparation. Is this really waste as it served its intended purpose and is not meant for direct consumption? And given the price and reuse of commercial grease I would argue this needs to be netted out. The only way to eliminate this waste is not to use cooking oils.
The second largest factor may be uneaten food or what is termed plate loss— and many reasons for this including too large portions or not liking the food. Food Service institution are also confronted by correctly estimating the demand for the meals and if we allow choice more uncertainty ensues. Over preparation is necessary to prevent not having sufficient numbers of prepared prepared meals. Large number of meals also entails handling problems and government food safety requirements that demand some element of wasting. Again my continuing point there comes a point where decreasing “waste” results in no food.
Now to the individual consumer the subject of most postings. Again cooking oils are a big part of the “waste” however the largest factor were fruits and vegetable spoiled upon home inspection and tossed. (ex those moldy strawberries you throw away once opening the package, that slightly brown outer leaves on the lettuce or those bad grapes you didn’t see when you bought them) Plate loss also counts as does spillage and spoilage in the refrigerator. Children markedly increase food loss for a variety of reasons. The foods most often wasted at home are fruits and vegetables as one would expect given that they are highly perishable (Meat is seldom thrown away)
My reaction to this paper is the message is flawed if not disingenuous. Fully 50% of the waste in my opinion is not waste (cooking oils and greases), some waste is necessary in institutions to provide choice and most importantly sufficient number of meals. Spoilage happens with perishable foods and much waste occurs though no fault of the consumer being found upon home inspection. Once we remove cooking oils, spillage and spoilage found following purchase we may be dealing with at best 1 to 2 percent waste as consumer “fault”. And if we were able to buy irradiated products more often we wouldn’t be forced to throw food away. And I’m just not open to calling children’s action waste.
So we are led to believe by this paper that we could save large energy expenditures if we just didn’t waste when in fact much of the waste is not waste- it is the necessary byproduct of feeding people. Could we do better? Probably but here is why I press on with this issue. If your intent is to promote agriculture energy efficiency- consumer waste is not where any discussion should start. Importantly such a focus distracts attention from the real issues.
The environment remains a problem because we propose ineffectual feel good solutions that prevent the understanding necessary to properly manage our resources. The problem is compounded by the ideological framing of the problem that eliminates certain solutions as unacceptable such as irradiation and GM. It is a system that glorifies a Paul Erlich but Norman Borlaug -whose work for the first time in the world’s history ended famine as a necessary human condition.
If you want to save ag energy:
– grow more food on less land (GM crops)
-irradiate the food supply freeing up massive acreage for wild or other productive uses (Agriculture is the number 1 cause of species loss) while also benefiting from a significant health protection from food born disease
-irradiate food and lose less in transport and storage. (Up to 50% of current production) Irradiate food and the consumer would need to throw away less spoiled food as irradiated food remains edible for six times longer than non-irradiated items.
-Stop wasting corn by turning it into a fuel source that consumes more energy than it creates and raises the cost of food to the poor.
– Stop subsidizing crops we have no intention of ever eating
Once we deal with these issue I’m open to a slap on the wrist for the unwise disposal of some errant brocolli spear. But till then promoting a vision that consumers by changing their habits can have an meaningful impact on the agriculture energy budget is just going to tick me off. As I said earlier if you don’t consider fixing the hole in the dam – I begin to wonder why you’re so damned concerned with how long my shower took. (a collective strawman argument- you’re not meant personally)
Latimer– The Brit shot was “over the top” and one I regret and apologize for.
@Patrick Guinness moffit
Your generous apology of course accepted. I don’t believe that we are far apart..just coming at the same problem from different angles. Cheers.
@curiousgeorge
‘The goal is to live as well as you can, for as long as you can. … every life form on the planet follows that same rule’
As TimF has pointed out, that is a serious misstatement of the position for many many lifeforms.
Suggested reading: ‘The Selfish Gene’ – by Richard Dawkins. This was (I believe) his first major work, and explains a lot about the behaviour of lifeforms. Without getting into the militant atheism that he has more recently espoused. A seminal book.
(And no I don’t want to get sunk into a discussion of religion on this thread…it ain’t about that).
Simple Leftovers Trick:
I have 8 ‘bowls’ with lids (ceramic, Corningware I think, with a small handle on the side). Leftovers get arranged in the bowls that go into the freezer. Instant “TV Dinners” for those times when in a hurry or just not feeling like cooking. Used for lunches, too.
Works well for pasta, meats, cooked vegetables, mashed potatoes. Some rice dishes (spanish rice, rice with oils or sauces in it) but not plain white rice (gets dry and mealy).
One of my favorites is lasagna w / green beans. The giant lasagna gets neatly divided into bowls of just the right size. No more ‘4th day in a row’ of lasagna leftovers…
A large part of the energy cost in growing food is in fertilizer production. Most of the food that isn’t wasted or waisted, ends up in human waste. That human waste is a rich resource that should be composted or otherwise processed for use as fertilizer saving energy and restoring the micro-nutrient content of our soils. New technologies for processing human waste at the point of production, perhaps using solar energy or radiation for sterilization, or technologies for exploiting the heat created by composting would help.
Latimer-
Think of my position as the Pareto Principle (Principle of Factor Sparsity or Law of the Vital Few) where 80% of an effect is the result of 20% of the causes. If we want to be as efficient as possible in changing some effect then we should choose initially from the subset of factors that causes the majority of the effect (the 20%). By not doing so we waste resources – public attention and problem understanding- being two of the more important.
That’s a good analysis. But in my own opinion it isn’t just the consumers alone that are wasting food, the producers as well. Some food products are out in the market that are way beyond the demand of the people. Isn’t that too much waste of energy too?
Online Parenting Class
Dear Moderators,
Isn’t that last comment just marketing spam? Commenter name linked to same URL found in comment, with some fluff words added. “Thread looks dead, then spam ahead.” This is more of that pattern.
At least the alternate energy “comments” were something like related to the topic with a relevant URL. But parenting classes? That’s not even trying.