As of September 2015, the United States set an ambitious goal to reduce its loss and waste 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that ends in landfills where it emits greenhouse gases As it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.
Researchers at UC Davis watched state policies across the country and estimated how much food waste every state was likely to reduce in 2022. They found that, without more work done at the federal level, no state is on the way to reach the national waste reduction. goal.
Researchers calculated that, even if taking into account reduction measures, the United States still generates about 328 pounds of food despair per person annually – which is also how much garbage was generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the US Department of Agriculture. announced the purpose of waste.
These figures indicate that even our best strategies to eliminate waste is not enough to achieve our goals, said Sarah Kakadellis, chief author of the study. Published in Nature This month.
To estimate how the United States makes to meet its food reduction in reduction, Kakadellis and her team used both publicly available data (from REFED, nonprofit monitors food despair in the United States) and estimates based on the current political landscape.
The results of the study were “not surprising” due to the absence of federal policy ruling food discharge, said Lori Leonard, president of the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. “People try to do what they can at state and municipal levels,” she said. “But we really need national guidance on this matter.”
Kakadellis suggests that a way forward will also be needed to change the way consumers think of certain garbage management strategies – such as typesetting.
Composting makes organic material, such as food pieces, into a food rich mix that can be used to fertilize new plants and crops. It can be considered a form of “recycling” food, although its final product technically cannot be eaten. This important detail means that consumers have to learn to look at composting, despite its potential environmental benefits, as a form of food waste, says Kakadolis.
“It really thinks of the best use of food that is to eat it,” she said.
Although it is advertised as a great alternative to throw away your moldy bananas into the garbage, composting is indeed classified as a form of food inconsistency by the United Nations and the European Union. In 2021, the EPA upgraded its definition of food discharge to include composting and unrest digestion – both of which can take inputs such as non -eaten food and make them fertilizer or biogas, respectively.
Updating its leadership, the EPA has released a hierarchy of food discharge – which shows that the best way to reduce food waste is to prevent it. This includes things like adding accurate date tags to food, so consumers are not confused about when something they bought, got worse or no longer safe to eat. It is also preferable to find another use for unsold or uninhabited foods – such as donating it to food banks or integrate into a animal feed, where it can be used to breed cattle (assuming cattle will also eventually eat people).
Composting will always play a role in diverting food waste from landfills – because these operations can accept damaged or rotten foods, which food banks, for example, cannot. “It’s not or/or. They have to go hand in hand, “said Kakadellis. “But we omit all these other steps and we go straight to the recycling too often.”
Leonard agrees, emphasizing the high costs associated with ensuring the nation’s spreading, complex food system runs smoothly: from the farm where crops are harvested to the trucks and refrigeration storage that handle packaged goods. “There is a huge amount of energy that is used to produce that food,” she said. “We don’t do that to create compost. You know, we do this to feed people. ”
Composition, of course, serves more than one goal and has environmental benefits beyond reducing food loss and waste. For example, it refills soils. But Leonard notes that if more work were done on the preventive side – how, to make sure that farms do not overproduce food – then soils would not be so cleared at first and would not need as much solution.
Both Leonard and Kakadallis emphasize that no tool to avoid sending food to landfills should be outside the table. Leonard, who previously worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, has once researched organic bans in other states.
“I asked them, do they encourage businesses or households to go up the EPA hierarchy and find others, better uses for their food pieces? . ” That includes typesetting.
Until there will be more options for pre- and post-consumer food waste, composting can be the best, most accessible choice for many people. “It’s the easiest thing to do,” said Leonard. “And it’s probably the safest thing until we have better protocols.”
This article originally appeared in Gist at https://grist.org/food-and-ugriculture/the-us-wants-du-food-waste-in-nhalf-Were-not-Even-close/. Grist is a non -profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a fair future. Learn more at Grist.org
