[HN Gopher] The war on food waste is a waste of time
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The war on food waste is a waste of time
Author : laurex
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-02-27 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (theoutline.com)
| screye wrote:
| > Much like paper straws or canvas totes, though, well-meaning
| small changes miss the forest of structural change for the trees
| of lifestyle tweaking
|
| This is my big takeaway from this article.
|
| It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the interests
| of sustainability, and how astoundingly futile or even counter
| productive it is. At the end of the day, people would rather feel
| nice about themselves than make actual change.
|
| At its base level things like urban design, our reliance on cars,
| subsidies on crop mono-cultures and the lack of proper
| introspection as a people hurt us far more than any of these
| specific problems.
|
| Maybe we should start at the most basic question. Is food-waste
| even a bad thing to begin with. Food waste has been proven to not
| be the cause of malnutrition issues plaguing some parts the US or
| the world. If it is because of depleting water resources or land
| fertility, then crop-monocultures and mono culture subsidies are
| more at fault. Being sustainable is clearly more expensive, so it
| is certainly not a cost issue.
|
| Across social, policy and organizational issues in the world,
| activists routinely assume a vague sense of what is "good" and
| then champion it, without actually looking into why something is
| good or what the word means in that context to begin with.
|
| I know that not everyone is as utilitarian about how they go
| about things, but I often wonder if a concept even holds ground
| if it cannot be rephrased in a manner that makes sense in a
| utilitarian setting.
| jl6 wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree with the thesis that people too
| readily engage in "sustainability theatre" as an excuse to
| avoid meaningful lifestyle change, I would also not want to
| lose sight of the many valuable things that individuals _can_
| do to make the world a better place. It's too easy to sink into
| apathy if you think change can only be done by others or large
| groups.
|
| 9 words to save the world:
|
| Treat others kindly
|
| Two kids max
|
| Plant based diet
| theseadroid wrote:
| > At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about
| themselves than make actual change.
|
| This. In many many places you see people like that. Many NGOs
| and charities don't help solving the problems at all if not
| aggravating them. It makes me doubt if the people running them
| are actual well intentioned people or just selfish in a
| different way.
| alexashka wrote:
| Being selfish and well intentioned are not incompatible, as
| long as being selfish includes the well being of those you
| care about and those you care about includes many people.
|
| The many people bit is problematic due to our brain's make-
| up.
| xtian wrote:
| Which aspect of the make-up of our brains limits caring
| about many people?
| machello13 wrote:
| Anyone know any charities for climate change, homelessness,
| etc. that actually are worth donating to?
| wolco wrote:
| The more local the more likely it will go to measurable
| impacts (your local homeless shelter). If an ngo spents 10
| times more in marketing compared to your donation it might
| be too big.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My pet theory is that anything people personally touch or see
| feels 1000x more important to them than the unseen.
|
| So things like straws, shopping bags, and your personal home
| trash becomes the focus, while vastly bigger problems that are
| out of sight/touch. are out of mind.
| zeveb wrote:
| > Across social, policy and organizational issues in the world,
| activists routinely assume a vague sense of what is "good" and
| then champion it, without actually looking into why something
| is good or what the word means in that context to begin with.
|
| Now imagine what happens if you give those well-intentioned but
| under-informed activists real power. One saw a lot of problems
| like that in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and Eastern Europe:
| folks who (mostly) genuinely wanted to do good, or at least
| (generally) didn't wish to do harm, but who instead wrought a
| great deal of economic (and more) harm to their countrymen.
|
| One sees the same phenomenon in large companies, most of whose
| executives really do want to do good or at least don't actively
| wish to hurt anyone, but whose decisions often result in
| unintended ill consequences both to themselves and others.
| LB232323 wrote:
| As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is
| entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in
| the food production chain.
|
| Our economic system is highly inefficient, and waste is a
| necessary part of maintaining profitable prices. This includes
| starvation, homelessness, and unemployment. Scarcity must be
| maintained.
|
| Malnutrition, or simply hunger in more plain terms, is
| prevalent across every type of community in the US and the
| world. The ghettos of cities, trailer parks and economically
| depressed rural areas, dilapidated suburbs, and the often
| overlooked Native land reservations.
|
| Just to get an idea of the inordinate balance of resources,
| consider that there are 552,830 homeless people in the US as of
| 2018 and 17,019,726 vacant homes. Billionaires hoard absolutely
| massive amounts of value generated by workers and do nothing
| with it or just let it sit in their portfolios.
|
| This mode of production is obscenely inefficient and long due
| for an overhaul.
| samatman wrote:
| > _As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it
| is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail
| in the food production chain._
|
| This would be relatively simple to demonstrate: simply show
| that capitalist societies all experience significant hunger
| and malnutrition, and that non-capitalist societies do not.
|
| You may find the latter somewhat challenging.
| TOGoS wrote:
| Capitalism currently dominates the entire planet (yes, the
| United States exerts its power everywhere, even to places
| that don't welcome it [1]). Of course it's going to be
| challenging to make such a comparison.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/boli
| via-i...
| LB232323 wrote:
| As TOGoS mentioned, capitalism currently dominates the
| world. Although it seems like his comment has been hidden,
| even though he is telling the truth. I expected my own
| comment to be voted down as it criticizes capitalism.
|
| The majority of human history takes place in the mode of
| production of the hunter-gatherer society. This is before
| the agricultural revolution and the advent of agricultural
| civilization.
|
| Economists describe this as early communism. The definition
| of this model is based in large part on the study of the
| Iroquois Confederacy. This, along with evolutionary models
| of food sharing, highlight a meat sharing system that is
| enforced communally. There is personal property, but
| private ownership of land and essential resources is
| nonexistent. The community owns the means of production as
| well as essential resources, and they dictate their
| distribution by need and not by profit.
|
| In modern society, this would manifest as collective
| ownership of the means of production by the working class.
| The means of production are capital that is used to produce
| goods. Land, water, corporations, factories, etc. As
| workers exist worldwide, collective ownership would take
| the form of a global socialist state owned by the workers.
| This is the purpose of the world revolution.
|
| As communities become organized around sustainability using
| vast amounts of capital created by workers under
| capitalism, the global state becomes redundant. At this
| stage, the economic structure returns to its original
| state, which is communism.
|
| It's not a ideological debate, calling someone Marxist is
| as redundant as calling a physicist a Newtonian or a
| mathematician a Pythagorean. Capitalism itself as we know
| it was defined by that era of economic science. Of course
| we should remain skeptical and critical, as many ideas from
| that era turned out to be wrong. What's difficult is
| constantly working against decades of Cold War era
| propaganda and disinformation.
|
| The primary American defense against the words socialism or
| communism is the idea that society is somehow built around
| personal character flaws and not laws of economic and
| political science. The capitalist is not inherently greedy,
| he simply follows the forces of economics. Communism is not
| some "ideal society" that works on paper but is undermined
| by human greed. It describes the majority of human history,
| and it requires a world revolution to exist again. Any
| nation that describes itself as "socialist" yet
| participates in the global economy is simply capitalist and
| masquerading as something else.
| dws1999 wrote:
| Sure, but before we overhaul the system in the United States
| (3% of population malnourishment), let's overhaul the system
| in countries where the population malnourishment is above 15%
| and bring them down to less than 5%. (http://data.worldbank.o
| rg/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?most_rece...)
|
| The mode of production in the US might seem highly
| inefficient if you have not lived in a different country for
| a prolonged period. But I can assure you, it is incredibly
| efficient.
|
| Source: I lived in Venezuela for 25 years
| forgotmypw16 wrote:
| It's bad because producing the food requires enormous
| expenditures in resources, energy, and ecology. Every morsel
| you eat was transported on diesel, created by the labor of
| humans, and cost many animals their lives through habitat loss
| and environmental poisoning.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Is food-waste even a bad thing to begin with.
|
| At the end of the day I just personally hate spending money on
| food that sits in the fridge unused then gets thrown out. Or
| gets cooked and thrown out because we cooked too much.
|
| Only thing worse would be setting money on fire directly.
|
| So yes, food waste is bad. Avoid.
| irrational wrote:
| Don't you eat your leftovers? I don't think we've ever thrown
| out food, but sometimes we have to eat the same exact thing
| for quite a few days.
| rsync wrote:
| "It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the
| interests of sustainability, and how astoundingly futile or
| even counter productive it is. At the end of the day, people
| would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual
| change."
|
| We are currently in the "bargaining stage" of our grief[1]
| about how we've built our lifestyles on a failure to pay for
| environmental externalities.
|
| People living modern, first-world lifestyles are (myself
| included) horrified by the idea that we can probably only
| afford to live like the global middle class - which is
| tremendously deficient in services, infrastructure, material
| possessions and their built environment.
|
| And so, otherwise intelligent people propose very silly things
| like the idea that if you just sorted your garbage just right
| your role in this crisis (the crisis of modernity, in my
| opinion) has been absolved.
|
| For what it's worth, the final stage of grief is paraphrased
| as:
|
| "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it; I may as well
| prepare for it."
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
| mjevans wrote:
| We can do better. The collective we can do better than that.
|
| There are a number of currently less than popular steps that
| are obvious short / middle term answers. *
| Nuclear power (cleaner, cheaper energy) * Waste
| Reducing Nuclear designs ('breeder' reactors) *
| Population design (reducing humans on Earth) * Fund
| better land / farming use. * Tax misuse.
|
| Longer term I feel that as a species we need to take bigger
| steps. * Colonies in space (orbit, moon,
| other planets) * Establishing at least robots in the
| 'belt * Building world ships to distribute backups
| * Solar collector rings for more power
|
| The problem with solar rings is that while they're great at
| focusing the sun for industrial uses like power plants or
| maybe solar forge operations, they're also great at
| delivering lots of energy to places that don't desire it.
| Like the evil villain in a cartoon, movie, or distopian
| dictatorship. I think they should be staffed the same way
| that other dangerous engineering operations should be
| staffed. Engineers and security forces working as part of the
| largest collective governing units (at the present time, that
| would probably be the UN or one of the permanent members on
| some UN security councils).
| martythemaniak wrote:
| To be honest, I find views like yours not only fatalist, but
| dangerous. Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that
| developed-world standards of living are globally possible and
| so all genuine efforts will just be written off as band-aids.
| Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse,
| that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only
| reasonable alternative.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Dangerous because if people start believing this en
| masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the
| only reasonable alternative.
|
| It's always been when resources are constrained. For all
| forms of life.
|
| Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre
| lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen
| for all 8B+ people. The ones that don't have this are
| unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars.
|
| Although, I might agree that it's best (at least for me) if
| people don't realize this or think about it in these terms
| en masse.
| notduncansmith wrote:
| > Single family detached homes with garages on quarter
| acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to
| happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don't have this
| are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars.
|
| True, but from a resource utilization perspective those
| things are pretty wasteful. We could definitely meet
| somewhere in the middle, our options are not "everyone
| lives like kings and some are destitute" or "all live
| like kings". The idea that anyone needs those things (or
| even deserves them more than anyone else) is the real
| enemy here.
| omginternets wrote:
| "I can't fight it" and "I may as well prepare for it"
| doesn't have to mean war. It might instead involve
| abandoning an economy built on infinite growth, even at the
| expense of some material wealth.
| ced wrote:
| "It's going to be okay" for us.
| mkolodny wrote:
| The author points to low wages as a real reason why people go
| hungry:
|
| > By focusing on food waste, corporate actors wash their hands
| of their responsibility to ensure their workers are paid -- and
| therefore fed -- just as fast as they punt responsibility for
| environmental action to consumers. Food waste's anti-hunger
| bent doesn't only divert food from landfills -- it diverts our
| attention from food justice.
|
| And earlier in the article:
|
| > anti-hunger networks like Feeding America are largely
| bankrolled by shiny corporate interests like Walmart and
| Kroger. On its own, this seems uncontroversial. But in light of
| the fact that these same companies notoriously undermine worker
| protections and pay workers measly wages -- while consistently
| lobbying Washington to keep wages suppressed -- claims to
| fighting hunger are straight-up deceitful.
| InvisibleCities wrote:
| >At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about
| themselves than make actual change.
|
| Almost, but not quite. At the end of the day, there are people
| making extraordinary amounts of money from the status quo, and
| those people would rather have the general population
| squabbling over minutiae than demanding systemic change that
| would actually resolve the problem (and subsequently cause
| those people to lose an awful lot of money).
| notduncansmith wrote:
| Food waste directly causes artificial inflation of food demand,
| which is reflected in excess agriculture, agriculture being one
| of the greatest source environmental damage currently.
| Emissions (throughout the entire supply chain from the farm to
| the table), soil compaction, runoff and other pollution are all
| externalized by Big Ag (meaning we as the people of the world
| pay the cost) and we amplify this when we waste food. That's
| not even getting into the excess waste management involved or
| the direct hit to our GDP from food waste. It's a big deal.
| xtian wrote:
| > At its base level things like urban design, our reliance on
| cars, subsidies on crop mono-cultures and the lack of proper
| introspection as a people hurt us far more than any of these
| specific problems.
|
| With the current ordering of our society, most people do not
| have the power or economic freedom to effectively advocate for
| change in our urban design, reliance on cars, or subsidies on
| crop monocultures.
|
| Do you really think the people making small changes in the ways
| that they have access to would reject more significant
| structural changes? This seems like a complete caricature to
| me.
| nitrogen wrote:
| This has been called the partial control fallacy, and we all
| fall for it at least occasionally:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ecz5iMQ7wNmhEaCh/the-
| partia...
|
| If you might be very near some threshold where the outcome
| can go from bad to good, then this kind of microoptimization
| in the face of macrowaste can make sense. Otherwise, it's
| actually more wasteful to do small things when the big things
| don't change.
|
| The urge to "do my part" is a strong and important one, but
| in some contexts it leads to a more wasteful outcome.
| tjoff wrote:
| The counterargument might be the idea that the small and
| individual changes signals that people are willing to put
| effort and money into the cause.
|
| Which eventually will enable new policies that do a better
| job of changing the big things.
|
| Such as - I guess that the biggest, environmental,
| advantage of an electric car is signalling that hey, I'm
| willing to put many thousands of dollars and tolerate an
| reduced range - _partly_ because I value the environment.
|
| Doesn't matter if an electric car actually is better for
| the environment (buying a new car seldom is) - it signals a
| will and desire. Both of which are paramount for policy-
| makers.
| kemitche wrote:
| This is how I feel.
|
| Walk the walk and talk the talk in small ways on a daily
| basis, and learn about and push for policy changes to try
| and encourage big changes.
|
| Or, to put it differently: on average, the people I know
| in my life who think about straw-waste reduction (and
| similar activities) positively are the ones also wanting
| larger changes. The people I know with disdain for "straw
| bans" and "plastic bag bans" also don't care about, or
| aren't aware of, the larger issues. They use the argument
| that "it's an irrelevant fix" as a shield to avoid
| thinking about the actual larger problems.
| aeternum wrote:
| Exactly, this kind of microoptimization often becomes worse
| due to other logical fallacies like sunk-cost and
| confirmation-bias which can cause the societal costs of
| addressing the "small thing" to snowball.
|
| We would likely be better off if we put all focus into the
| big things and completely ignored the small things.
| xtian wrote:
| What's the best way to change the big things?
| LB232323 wrote:
| Collective action through widespread unity and
| organization. In other words, revolution. This method has
| successfully evolved society time and time again.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| Hopefully you are on the winning side, otherwise you may
| be re-eduacated, disappeared, thrown in a camp, hung,
| shot, beheaded or otherwise exterminated. at the very
| least will suffer the tyranny of the majority.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of Democracy that it allows for
| peaceful revolution?
|
| It seems to me that you've made the assumption that all
| revolution involves violence and purges of dissenters.
| dws1999 wrote:
| peaceful revolution != peaceful transition of power
|
| historically speaking, revolutions are a crapshoot.
|
| forward looking, revolutions are a crapshoot (often sold
| by people not acquainted with history).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Revolution is good at destroying things. Not creating new
| ones.
|
| Occasionally, the present needs to be destroyed
| regardless. But it's really a final resort.
| xtian wrote:
| I completely agree. And I would argue that small changes
| aren't "wasteful" in this context since they start
| conversations and demonstrate commitment and credibility.
| 101404 wrote:
| > It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the
| interests of sustainability
|
| Maybe I am just too pessimistic. But I see most those people
| not as "well intentioned" but as "wanting to be part of the
| group". And to be part of the group, you have to play that
| game. Like it or not. After all, as humans we are very social
| animals and most of us need that group recognition.
| papreclip wrote:
| > people would rather feel nice about themselves
|
| Is that really it, or do people get a power trip out of getting
| plastic straws banned?
| nhoughto wrote:
| Isn't that basically the same thing? Power trip getting
| something banned for everyone ~= changing your own behavior
| and telling people about it
| J-dawg wrote:
| Food is cheaper than at any other time in history. Make food
| expensive again and watch the wastage plummet. How to make food
| expensive?
|
| - Stop subsidising farmers to over-produce
|
| - End intensive farming of animals
|
| - Ban imports from any country that refuses to do the same
|
| In the process, you'd go a long way towards solving a whole bunch
| of environmental issues. The meat you'd produce would admittedly
| have a bigger carbon (and land) footprint, but the cost would
| make people eat less of it. Animal welfare would be massively
| improved.
|
| People don't value things that are cheap. This is one of those
| issues where no politician can admit the real cause, so they have
| to resort to posturing.
| habosa wrote:
| Food may be cheaper than ever but there are also hundreds of
| millions of people who can barely afford to eat.
|
| Any plan to intentionally raise the price of food across the
| board will result in millions of people being at risk of
| malnutrition or starvation. It's not something to suggest
| lightly.
|
| The best plan for the climate is to kill all humans. But I
| don't think that's what we want.
| J-dawg wrote:
| I was being somewhat tongue in cheek. I'm not actually saying
| that "expensive food" should be a goal.
|
| I was simply trying to point out that it's ridiculous to
| complain about food waste without doing anything to change a
| system that incentivises massive overproduction.
| OrangeMango wrote:
| In the developed world, food is so inexpensive that it is
| cheaper to wildly overproduce and ignore wastage. If you
| could eliminate poverty, you'd just end up with higher food
| production and the same rate of food wastage, resulting in
| more wasted food overall. Efforts to reduce poverty and food
| waste, running in parallel are what we need. Articles like
| these do not help.
|
| In the developing world, most of the food wast that occurs at
| the source (farm/distribution) is unintentional and would be
| reduced with better infrastructure, policy, property rights,
| etc. Building a modern cold-storage warehouse in these
| locations is not a solution!
| KoftaBob wrote:
| This sounds like the food version of the solutions NIMBYs
| propose for housing costs.
|
| "housing is expensive because of all the skilled workers moving
| to SF? The solution is obviously to block all new office
| construction so companies move elsewhere!"
| the_watcher wrote:
| You'd also disproportionately impact the poorest people in any
| given area where the cost of food increased.
| ksdale wrote:
| I think an important question is how much slack does the system
| need?
|
| Such huge overproduction of food seems wasteful until there's a
| risk of famine. As the effect of coronavirus on supply chains
| is currently demonstrating, there are potentially giant hidden
| costs to maximizing efficiency at a certain point in time.
|
| I agree with drastically decreasing meat consumption, but food
| production in general is, AFAIK, a relatively minor portion of
| total greenhouse emissions (especially everything that is not
| meat and especially compared to how important food is
| sustaining human life).
| illegalsmile wrote:
| Why are so many things that have such a high environmental cost
| (water, gasoline, food, etc...) so heavily subsidized to the
| point where gross waste is inherent?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Because that having necessities like water, food and
| transportation be cheap enough that even the poors can buy
| enough to meet their needs is a net positive to the quality
| of life of a society. The trade-off is that makes them cheap
| enough to waste to varying degrees.
| mech1234 wrote:
| If we lived in a world where 0% of food was wasted, we would be
| living in a world with 0% safety margin for a supply shock (aka
| famine).
|
| For this reason alone, I don't mind food waste too much.
|
| It's also a reason (although I think corn ethanol is more
| wasteful than useful on the whole) for the government to support
| corn ethanol. If famine arrives, divert the dent corn from the
| refineries and have everyone eat more grits.
| basch wrote:
| I dont buy that. Excess can be canned and frozen.
| mech1234 wrote:
| Your statement seems confused.
|
| The food production system as a whole produces more food than
| humanity as a whole consumes. If you can and freeze your
| leftovers as an individual it does not change this.
|
| At a system level- farms, silos, and grocery stores have no
| interest in storing any more stock than reasonable, and
| continually stuffing a growing stock into a larger
| warehouse/silo is wasteful.
|
| If wide swathes of citizens changed their behavior to
| habitually can and freeze more leftovers, and waste less, it
| would be a good thing, and farms would decrease production, I
| agree. But it misses the point I made.
| basch wrote:
| >At a system level- farms, silos, and grocery stores have
| no interest in storing any more stock than reasonable
|
| That sounds like an economic failure. On one hand we have
| futures and maple syrup reserves to keep prices up during
| shortages, but we dont have reserves to address "0% safety
| margin for a supply shock (aka famine)"?
|
| I would expect excess farm production to be stored for
| famine, as a stability control function of government. The
| farms still produce, still get their money, and the
| government has a safety net for keeping the peace during
| chaos.
| imtringued wrote:
| That safety net won't last long.
| basch wrote:
| Like I said in my unpopular comment, I dont buy it. I
| dont buy that canning, freezing, and drying food cant
| lead to a long term storage reserve. Is it a geographic
| size issue, that the warehouse space cant possibly exist?
|
| Lett's say famine hits for one or two years, and we
| actually do get better about wasting food. Two years of
| famine year food usage is 1.33 years of current food
| usage. Its not possible to reserve that much food for the
| current population of a country, even dried? It sounds
| more like we just dont want to, the benefit doesnt
| outweigh the effort, or nobody wants to pay for it.
| mech1234 wrote:
| Your solutions can exist. Whether they should or not is
| an economic tradeoff problem. Production is not free,
| storage is not free either. Neither one of us have been
| arguing with hard data yet regarding total $ costs, or
| evaluation of long-term risks, but the tradeoffs do
| exist.
|
| The U.S. grows 13 billion bushels of corn per year (https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_..
| .). Of this, it looks like about 1 billion bushels go to
| feeding U.S. residents directly. I tried to lookup the
| volume of corn silos in the U.S. to get a good figure for
| how many years' worth of consumption we keep lying
| around, I haven't found anything yet.
|
| And this is all looking at a pretty low-level survival
| grain- canned foods are a bit more expensive to store,
| then fresh produce, then frozen foods, then fresh meat,
| etc. (approximately). These foods are also more expensive
| to produce.
| basch wrote:
| I said that one comment up.
|
| >That sounds like an economic failure.
|
| Id be curious to see an estimate of cost to store 1 year
| of sunflower, pepita, dried salmon, dried seaweed, dried
| spinach, dried blueberry. I am imaging a really gross
| salmon trail mix can, you eat one can a day.
|
| What is the main enemy of storing what is basically mass
| birdseed? Light/heat spoiling the fats?
| throw321432 wrote:
| "1.33 years of current food usage."
|
| Imagine all the world's agriculturally produced land. Now
| imagine a third of the food produced in a warehouse. How
| big is this warehouse?
|
| Another way of looking at it: "How much rice would it
| take to provide the caloric needs of a family of four for
| a month, if they only ate rice?"
|
| A lot of rice! We don't realize how much volume and mass
| goes through our mouths because we buy food very often
| and never keep much of it at home.
| basch wrote:
| I know this isnt how it works, but.
|
| 1/3rd of food is wasted. If we canned 1/3 of food
| production instead, it would take 2 years to create 1
| year of reserve food.
| jka wrote:
| It's definitely good to have excess production capacity
| available.
|
| To respond to your statement, though: zero wastage doesn't
| imply zero extra capacity (or safety margin, as you put it).
|
| It'd be easier and cheaper to build a safety margin and
| additional capacity if wastage were lower.
| mech1234 wrote:
| There is some margin in food inventory, but food lead times
| are long (several months) and stocks (grain silos, grocery
| store inventory) are small relative to the rate at which they
| are consumed. Increasing production capacity also takes time
| in addition to the existing lead time.
|
| These reasons dictate that it's more useful to think of food
| distribution as a flow than as a stock. In this sense
| thinking of calories produced divided by calories consumed
| straightens out thinking in the long term.
| jka wrote:
| Thanks for the considered and thoughtful response.
|
| I don't have much to add at the moment, but do still think
| that reducing waste (reducing the numerator, in the
| calorific viewpoint you suggest) is a reasonable goal -
| both in the supply chain and in consumer behaviour.
|
| The lead times concern (especially during a food supply
| shock) is valid - the only analogy I can think of just now
| is backup stored energy; i.e. considering canned food as
| 'batteries'. Enough to survive off-grid for a while in an
| outage (and ideally rechargeable over longer time periods).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| We normally don't eat dent corn...but in a pinch I guess.
| mech1234 wrote:
| Grits are made of dent corn.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Flour corn? No?
| nkurz wrote:
| I'm not sure what the right authoritative source would
| be, but here's one from Iowa that claims "Traditionally,
| grits are made with southern dent corns":
| http://blog.seedsavers.org/blog/true-grits. I think the
| issue might be that true "flour corn" was originally
| grown only in the Southwest and is rare in the US these
| days. Most commercial corn meal these days is made from
| "dent" rather than "flour", which might cause the two to
| be confused. Carol Deppe's book "The Resilient Gardener"
| has a nice chapter on which corns are most appropriate
| for different cooking purposes.
| phyzome wrote:
| That's only true assuming:
|
| 1) Food only consists of highly perishable produce, and
|
| 2) People are unwilling to make substitutions or otherwise
| change their eating or cooking plans.
|
| No one's gonna die from a supply chain outage of pears, and we
| can warehouse lentils without them going bad.
| ciconia wrote:
| > This creative accounting suggests that wasting less food would
| somehow undo all of the harms of food production. But the
| nutrient cycle does not care whether or not you clean your plate.
|
| This nails it. Unfortunately people who compost their food waste
| are a negligible minority, especially in the city. I collect the
| food waste of a local restaurant every week, and it goes to the
| compost pile. I collect waste from the butcher and it goes to my
| dog and cat, and what they don't eat goes back to the chickens.
| The chickens pick through the compost pile for worms and insects
| and whatever proteins they find, and the compost that's left will
| eventually feed the garden beds and the vegetables and fruits
| we'll eat in the summer.
| panzagl wrote:
| The easiest way to eliminate food waste would be to eliminate
| fresh produce, meat, and baked goods. If it can't be canned or
| frozen, process it and pump it full of preservatives until it
| can.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Needs a /s tag......
| refurb wrote:
| The OP is accurate. Canned food would see much less waste.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Except for all the extra packaging needed....not to mention
| the energy overhead of the processing operation and the
| fact that a world with only preserved food would
| suck......like really hard.
| refurb wrote:
| You're not willing to sacrifice good food to save the
| environment?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Most people won't even sacrifice food they like to avoid
| the suffering of conscious beings. The "environment" is
| even more abstract. It's a non-starter.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Some people can't sacrifice food they like to avoid their
| own personal suffering.
| aWEfjaWefj wrote:
| Unironically, no
| panzagl wrote:
| I'd like to see a comparison of the energy costs of
| canning versus maintaining the refrigeration chain needed
| for fresh, my gut tells me that canning is a centralized
| process and therefore more open to efficiencies than
| refrigerated trucks and storage.
|
| But anyone who's worked produce can tell you a lot of
| stuff gets thrown away at each step before it reaches the
| consumer.
| tsjq wrote:
| off topic. it took me a while to notice this isn't outline.com :)
| forgotmypw16 wrote:
| I've removed one human's worth of money flow from the system.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| The problem comes from most first-world people lifestyles, it's
| an accumulation of consumerism and damaging things, like buying
| products with (plastic) packagings, non-necessary products (like
| cosmetics), non-seasonal vegetables/fruits, having pets for
| example (1/5th of meat and fish production is used for pets food)
| vzidex wrote:
| Yes, but the fault lies with both personal decisions and large
| corporations. The argument you've made is most often made in
| bad faith to guilt consumers into ineffective actions, shifting
| the blame from the systems that mould wasteful lifestyles to
| the "weak" individual who is trying their best.
|
| Most of the items you listed are necessary or can be made to
| have little impact, e.g.: >plastic packaging Agreed here, most
| of it is unnecessary. However, it is a systemic issue - buying
| goods (especially groceries) that do not come in plastic
| requires significant effort i.e. shopping at bulk food stores
| or farmers' markets. >cosmetics Sure, a lot are unnecessary,
| but I'd hate to go into work where nobody wore deodorant,
| showered, or washed their hands. >Non-seasonal
| fruits/vegetables Depends on the fruit/vegetable. Where I live
| in Canada buying non-seasonal/local is essential - otherwise
| I'd be eating apples 6 months of the year. Fruits and
| vegetables that can be transported by ship often have a lower
| impact than locally-grown. >Having pets Most pet food is made
| from by-products that would be wasted by the animal murder
| industry. I'm vegan, but as long as people eat meat (which,
| let's be real, they will) owning pets brings huge positive
| impact to peoples' lives, with little impact - as long as
| you're not feeding your dog steak.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| The point is really honestly not to guilt people, it's really
| about the environment and a common shared effort, almost all
| the pollution is more or less directly coming from end-users,
| consumers, thus we have a huge impact. The other day I
| discussed with someone at supermarket in front of fruits,
| about reusing plastic bags, or bringing reusable bags, they
| told me they do reuse those small plastic bags, for picking
| their dogs poop. Now with a bit of distance, you realize the
| nonsense: poop, which is more or less good fertilizer,
| wrapped in plastics, all that thrown in the common bin,
| collected by trucks, and brought in the incinerator. And this
| multiplied by a bunch of people
|
| Yes pets food is often made of secondary parts, but it's
| still an accelerating factor in fishing/animal farming (some
| suggest insects
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#cite_note-8) maybe),
| we also always forget the indirect cost and pollution, like
| the transport, the packaging needed to feed daily those 1
| billion pets or so worldwide, and their other services, let
| alone side-effect like feral-cats, ... Yes in some cases pets
| are useful, but not all
|
| For cosmetics, just see how uncommon has become a basic soap
| bar, which is however the most efficient cleaning product,
| and likely less polluting
|
| Ok for fruits in winter, I can understand you as a huge fruit
| eater (I'm in the South of France), it's still a win-win to
| eat seasonal, seasonal fruit/vegs are much more nutritive. I
| think apples is not the best example as with a few variety
| you can cover the whole year, maybe not locally in Canada
| though, your gray Canadian apples are excellent tho
| floren wrote:
| Cutting out deodorant and euthanizing my dog has allowed me to
| convert Soylent into Javascript at a much lower environmental
| cost.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Have you considered using a more efficient programming
| language to lower the environmental cost of running your
| code?
| jessaustin wrote:
| I can't believe you wasted all that meat through
| euthanization... what do you think they make Soylent from?
| geddy wrote:
| I have no idea what I just read but you might be on to
| something, or you have lost your mind, possibly both.
| war1025 wrote:
| The line from Fight Club really hit me hard and sunk in deep
| when I saw the movie as a teen:
|
| "We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need"
|
| Want to feel less stress as work? Consume less. Want to have a
| smaller impact? Consume less. Want to have freedom to splurge
| on things that you do actually care about? Consume less.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Don't forget _eating too much meat_ , which is responsible for
| most of the other 4/5th's.
|
| I'm not saying everyone should be vegetarian but for most
| people eating 50% less meat would be a lot more impactful than
| avoiding plastic packaging or imported veggies.
| [deleted]
| scott_s wrote:
| > In her 1998 book Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of
| Entitlement, sociologist Janet Poppendieck controversially argued
| that, rather than seriously addressing the problem of hunger,
| food shelves and other nodes of the charity-based "emergency food
| system" unintentionally served to perpetuate it in their feeble
| attempts to mend the holes in the social safety net wrought by
| Reagan-era bootstrapping and Clinton-era welfare reform. Rather
| than focus more structurally on workers' rights and economic
| justice issues, organizations and institutions coalescing around
| fighting hunger concerned themselves with addressing immediate
| needs in ways that did not rock the boat politically.
|
| If bad building and furniture regulations were causing home
| fires, we would of course want to focus on improving those. But
| we would still need fire fighters.
| mc32 wrote:
| Unfortunately a lot of these measures, it seems, are brought up
| because they're "photogenic", they lend themselves to inculcation
| of kids (like banning straws).
|
| But, in the end it has very minimal impact on the effects we're
| trying to suppress but on the other hand is very good at getting
| people used to doing things without thinking through issues
| independently. It primes kids for ready-made ideology.
| rebuilder wrote:
| "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight
| you, then they make token concessions and pretend you win."
| swiley wrote:
| Isn't that what they said about theranos?
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I agree most of this is just a feel good campaign.
|
| Banning plastic straws infuriates me. Paper straws are trash. I
| carry my own plastic ones and use them as needed.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Where exactly were plastic straws "banned?" As far as I know,
| the ban was on providing them without their being
| specifically requested.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Santa Monica also has a complete ban on plastic straws, and
| LA City has a ban on providing them to dine-in customers
| unless specifically requested
| (https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-plastic-
| straws-...). LA County has a similar rule but allows for
| the business to ask the customer if they want a plastic
| straw.
| SllX wrote:
| San Francisco. Non-plastic straws only (so paper or even
| bamboo is fine), although there are a few businesses trying
| to work through their existing plastic stock on the down
| low.
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| Most restaurants in my area still use plastic straws. I think
| most people have forgotten about that and moved on to
| something else to be pissed about.
| downerending wrote:
| It's not just useless. At least one person has already been
| killed by a reusable straw. (Fell on metal one while using.)
| standardUser wrote:
| That one-time use plastic straw - an object that no one
| strictly needs and has many alternatives - will persist in
| the environment indefinitely and will cause harm to
| ecosystems.
|
| You can think that's OK (I guess), but you can't pretend that
| preventing permanent harmful waste is only about feeling
| good. It's about preventing permanent harmful waste. Feeling
| good can be a little bonus I suppose.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I absolutely can think it's ok. I purchase and properly
| dispose of single use plastic items. Nothing wrong with
| that.
| lopmotr wrote:
| No it won't if it's in a properly managed landfill. This is
| the misconception that anti-plastic fanatics have. Plastic
| doesn't kill fish when it's trapped underground forever.
|
| Straws in the ocean were dumped there by careless people.
| Since you care about the environment, there's no way you're
| using a paper straw so you can continue dropping it into
| the stormwater drain without the problems that you used to
| cause when you dropped plastic straws into the drain. The
| very people who choose paper straws are the ones that can't
| make any difference because they weren't the problem in the
| first place.
| nkrisc wrote:
| At the same time, I don't miss them. Turns out that I never
| really needed them in the first place. Sure, some people
| might need them, but I imagine the vast majority of people
| don't really need to use a straw.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| It's a bit unfortunate for people with mobility issues who
| _needed_ straws though. They benefited from it being a
| common thing and how they 'll need to pack their own or
| something.
| ganstyles wrote:
| Same. All cold brew coffee lately seems to come without
| straws and I don't miss them. I do carry around a reusable
| straw, one of the singular swag items from a conference
| that I've used. It's really a small trade-off from what,
| for me, must have been 1000 plastic straws used annually.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| So in what way have you been harmed then, if you are using a
| reusable straw rather than one that would otherwise end up in
| a landfill or require recycling? We have metal and silicon
| ones we use - chances are our family will never need a
| disposable plastic or paper straw ever again, so I fail to
| see how we've been harmed in this ban.
| liotier wrote:
| What country do you live in ? Are straws necessities there ?
| I live in France and I can't remember the last time I used a
| straw - must have been a couple of years ago...
| danaris wrote:
| There are people with disabilities that make it difficult
| to impossible for them to drink without using a straw.
| Until plastic straws were banned, they were transparently
| accommodated by the existing systems.
|
| Now, they're shamed for or outright prevented from using
| the accessibility devices that allow them to actually,
| y'know, consume necessary and lifegiving liquid.
| swiley wrote:
| I tried drinking coffee through a straw one summer because
| it's supposed to protect your teeth.
|
| I'm pretty sure I'm at a greater risk of throat cancer now,
| and other than that I'm not too sure why you would want
| them.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Which is why it's not recommended to use a straw with hot
| beverages, only cold ones.
| nkrisc wrote:
| If that's a concern, the more practical solutions are to
| 1) brush your teeth after drinking coffee or 2) don't
| drink coffee.
|
| I do choose to drink coffee and don't brush immediately
| after and accept the risk to my teeth.
|
| I was worried about the effect of soda on my teeth so I
| stopped drinking it.
| [deleted]
| pnutjam wrote:
| hot drinks != use straw
|
| cold drinks = use straw
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Straws were originally introduced for public health
| reasons, so that your mouth need not touch a surface
| previously touched by someone else's mouth (and which was
| not well-cleaned).
|
| I'm not aware of any studies confirming or denying their
| advantage in the era of modern food safety standards.
| pnutjam wrote:
| My teeth hurt if I drink icy beverages without a straw. I
| think it can also contribute to tooth staining, and
| probably cavities if it's a sugary drink.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Why is causing people - kids or otherwise - to contemplate
| their footprint on the earth or their impact to other people a
| bad thing?
|
| I've never been a straw user, but frankly we bought some
| reusable metal straws (my partner uses them), some reusable
| portable utensils, and regularly carry our portable coffee cups
| when we go out in public. All things that can fit in a purse or
| bag. We don't find it an inconvenience and we like that perhaps
| in a small way we are reducing the amount of generated waste.
| peterwoerner wrote:
| Because we give false measures and waste time and energy on
| things which are either insignificant or end up being
| detrimental.
|
| Frequently we end up with a solution which is even worse for
| the environment. For instance, we switched from single use
| plastic bags to multiple use plastic bags in new york. I
| spent $8 dollars on buying 4 multiuse polypropylenes bags,
| not a big deal, but 2 of the four bags are already beginning
| to rip after 5 or 6 uses. In order for the the reusable bags
| to be as environmentally friendly as the single use bags they
| need to be reused atleast a couple of hundred times. So my
| grocery shopping is now a couple of bucks more expensive for
| me (whatever) and environmentally less friendly.
|
| Straws are likely the same deal, plastic straws are probably
| more environmentally friendly than their metal straws.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Straws are likely the same deal, plastic straws are
| probably more environmentally friendly than their metal
| straws._
|
| No, they're not. Full stop. It's not just the production of
| the straws that matters, it's their post-use effects. They
| can choke birds and fish, pierce stomachs or guts, and
| eventually become microplastics that get eaten by plankton
| and fish since the plastic doesn't degrade on a timeframe
| relevant to human or even generational lifespans.
| vntok wrote:
| Are you aware that metal straws share all of those
| issues, notably that they do not degrade on human-
| relevant timeframes either? The difference is recycling
| them is a lot more costly than recycling plastics in
| terms of energy/heat needed.
| b1ur wrote:
| the purpose of a metal straw is not to be used once then
| thrown away. sure, if people began throwing away their
| metal straws after a single use it would be as bad as
| plastic straws, but that's not why people use metal
| straws.
| lopmotr wrote:
| Hardly any plastic waste ends up in the ocean. If you
| just throw it in the bin like a normal person, none of
| that harm will happen.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I'm a little dumbfounded by this as well - I have reusable
| grocery bags going back at least fifteen years that are
| still very usable. The more recently acquired ones are even
| better and I fully intend to be using them for another 15
| years - and none of them cost me more than a few dollars
| each and/or were given to me as freebies. This is for
| weekly shopping for a family of five plus 4 pets so it
| isn't like we are gentle on them either.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Planned obsolescence == Profit
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I bought a reusable bag/container from Walmart for $20. I
| used it at least a hundred times over the course of a
| couple of years. It was in perfect condition when I
| switched cities and donated it to someone. Another smaller
| one for $15 was used twice a week for 3 years.
| jerf wrote:
| Those bags require even _more_ uses to be made of them
| before they break even vs. plastic bags, let alone end up
| being a benefit. I would find it hard to believe that on
| average they are a net gain.
|
| I think one of the problems is that people very much
| overestimate how big a problem "plastic bags at the
| grocery store are", because they're big, and white, and
| loud when they move around, and they're something so many
| people deal with. But they're also whisps of plastic
| nothingness. Save up all the bags you shop with, and see
| how long it takes for them to equal the _mass_ , of, say,
| this: https://www.amazon.com//dp/B07HKV9339 You're going
| to be saving for a long time... and you're going to be
| saving long past the point where your best efforts have
| squashed those bags into the same apparent _volume_.
|
| Plastic bags and straws aren't the problem. "Solving" the
| not-a-problem is burning people's limited give-a-damn on
| pointless wastes of time, and psychologically rewarding
| people for doing useless things to their own detriment
| that helps nobody.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I think you and I are optimizing for different values. I
| don't know about yours, but I have two (among others):
|
| 1. Restructure society to become carbon neutral.
|
| 2. Restructure society to end throwaway culture.
|
| I understand that to some people 2 is a secondary value
| derived from 1. For me, both are independent primary
| values, not derived from any other deeper value, or from
| each other.
|
| I am fairly certain that, while local moves towards the
| two values sometimes seem in conflict, I think on the
| global scale, they are roughly in the same direction. So
| yes, I will buy cotton bags every half decade or so, so I
| don't use and throw away a minuscule volume of plastic
| bags, that are a symbol of the throwaway culture.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I like the way you phrased this in terms of incentives
| and optimization as I think you capture the conflict of
| this thread well.
| jerf wrote:
| Yes, that's true, I only care about actual damage to the
| environment. I do not care about curtailing actions that
| don't particularly harm it, and I would resist attempts
| to force people to curtail those actions just to make
| _other_ people feel good.
|
| It is not clear to me if you are advocating for everyone
| to not use plastic bags. If you choose to do net very-
| slight harm to the environment to take a stand against
| some thing you find aesthetically displeasing, that's
| find by me, because we're talking negligible values on
| all sides here. No sarcasm; I truly have no objection. We
| all tend to spend much greater on things much sillier.
| And you're putting your skin in the game, at your
| expense. No sweat.
|
| If you are advocating that everybody should do so, that
| is at the very least questionable, though, and downright
| wrong at the government level. If the government is going
| to decide that environmental damage is a concern it has,
| which is fine, then at the very least they could use
| those powers to actually _help the environment_ , rather
| than helping some particular people's sense of
| aesthetics, and their sense of aesthetics at _other
| people 's_ actions no less, while failing at their stated
| goals.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We have to prioritize, though. #1 is more important than
| #2 at the moment.
| peterwoerner wrote:
| The bags are an example, it's very recent thing so near
| the top of my mind.
|
| My point which I articulated poorly is that when we push
| environmental friendly things we should push for things
| which are more/actually effective, e.g. make sure you use
| your car for as long as possible, and build smaller, well
| insulated, energy efficient homes.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Porque no los dos?
| zeveb wrote:
| It's a little like Mr. Obama's Cash-for-Clunkers programme,
| which sounds awesome at first, right? We got all those old
| polluting cars off of the roads! Except that they were by and
| large replaced with new cars whose manufacture caused far
| more pollution. And the programme expended funds which would
| have yielded a better result elsewhere.
|
| I don't carry any water for plastic straws -- haven't used
| them regularly since I was a kid -- but it's easily
| imaginable that the political capital expended to ban them
| would have yielded better results for the environment
| elsewhere.
|
| Heck, it's very possible that your metal straws themselves
| caused more environmental damage than the average man's
| lifetime straw consumption. Or not.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The issue is miseducation essentially - it effectively
| promotes bikeshedding and signaling contests instead of
| anything actually productive.
|
| An analogy is "Why would promoting handwashing to combat aids
| be a bad thing? It gets people focused on health."
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >An analogy is "Why would promoting handwashing to combat
| aids be a bad thing? It gets people focused on health."
|
| Well? Do tell. While hand washing or eliminating plastic
| bags or eliminating plastic straws might not be the end-all
| be-all of good environmental stewardship or good health
| practices, I'm a bit dumbfounded how they can be seen in a
| negative light. It's flu season, be cognizant of hand
| washing and cover your mouth when you cough - how's that a
| harmful message again?
| spdionis wrote:
| > It's flu season, be cognizant of hand washing and cover
| your mouth when you cough - how's that a harmful message
| again
|
| Well, you don't get to say you're helping to combat aids
| by giving out that type of advice. If you try, you are
| "promoting bikeshedding and signaling contests" instead
| of doing anything productive [to solve the AIDS problem].
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Nasrudith - I suppose I should caveat all this and say that
| I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful response to my query.
| Thank you for the civil discourse. That stated - this point
| about "instead of anything actually productive" - the issue
| there is, I can only do what I can do. That is, I can vote
| in ways I think are good for the planet. I can choose
| products with minimal packaging. I can compost and use my
| metal straws and reusable shopping bags. BUT, I can't make
| the US agree to the Paris agreement and I am not an
| executive at an energy company or what have you. Thus, each
| of us can only do our small part. Is that signaling? Well
| yes, it signals that I'm trying.
| mc32 wrote:
| Straws are neither here nor there. More power to you on
| whatever choice you make.
|
| The point is these measures solidify indoctrination. Let us
| tell you what to do. "We'll think it through for you. Here is
| what's good." And as kids grow up they grow up trusting these
| voices telling them what's best for them. It undercuts their
| critical thinking skills. It's one big "YEA".
|
| Rarely are they asked to follow the rabbit hole or all the
| unintended consequences. But it makes people feel good about
| "having agency" and "doing good".
| chimprich wrote:
| It seems to me that at least as big a problem in today's
| world is too much scepticism. Most of the time, the experts
| are correct. People question the science on climate change,
| the benefits of vaccination, whether the moon landings
| happened, whether the Earth is round, all based on the
| flimsiest of evidence.
| ganstyles wrote:
| My understanding is that a lot of people had this attitude
| when seatbelts were first introduced as being required for
| vehicles. And I see it now with respect to things like
| straws and mandatory bicycle helmet laws. It has always
| come across to me as very, "Old man yells at cloud" talk.
| Eventually you or your children won't even miss straws and
| the world will be better off for having banned them. We all
| play a part in making things better and it's very hard to
| argue that not being able to use straws is a bar thing.
| leetcrew wrote:
| kinda offtopic, but I really object to lumping seatbelt
| laws and helmet laws together. mandatory seatbelt use is
| as much for the safety of people _outside_ the vehicle as
| those within it. unrestrained human bodies can become
| dangerous projectiles in an accident.
|
| mandatory helmet laws are dumb nanny stuff. if someone
| wants to split their skull on a curb, it's their own
| business. riding a bike/scooter at low speeds is not
| particularly risky anyway, and such laws add friction to
| a healthy and environmentally friendly means of
| transportation.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| My opinion for what it's worth is all societies do what you
| are complaining about. Historically most have been far more
| rigid with barely any introspection.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| People like to pick on straw bans but the reason they're a
| thing is because plastic straws represent a substantial portion
| of the trash found on beaches and in waterways. And like
| plastic trash bags, plastic straws don't degrade, they just get
| ground up into smaller and smaller pieces.
|
| They can also choke fish and birds if they get caught in the
| throats, or poke holes in the stomachs/guts of fish and birds.
|
| Plastic straw bans may not make much sense in the Midwest, but
| they do matter in coastal areas.
| jartelt wrote:
| This article is pretty off the mark. Yes, eliminating food waste
| will not solve the climate problem. However, eliminating food
| waste will absolutely help the climate problem as well as reduce
| needed landfill space, and provide valuable compost.
|
| There is very little downside to encouraging people to waste less
| food and to divert food waste from the trash into compost. Many
| people already have compost programs in their city, so it is
| trivial for them to stop throwing food in the trash. Food waste
| in landfills breaks down super slowly and releases methane into
| the atmosphere. This is not good. It's much better to use the
| food waste to make compost or to use an anaerobic digester and
| make carbon negative methane.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| What is the downside?
| swiley wrote:
| Having to sort trash and manage a biological process are two
| that I can think of.
| jartelt wrote:
| Industrial compost sites and anaerobic digesters are likely a
| bit smelly. People also may gripe about having a compost bin
| in addition to a recycling and trash bin.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Aerobic compost is not smelly. Anaerobic fermentation
| caused by not mixing in enough oxygen is very smelly and
| slow.
| jartelt wrote:
| Yea, smell issues are from transport of the food waste to
| the facilities. If you have a facility accepting waste,
| there will be trunks bringing in smelly stuff on a
| regular basis.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Cynical hottake, 150B of food waste per year in US, aka one
| mans trash is another's revenue.
| buckminster wrote:
| Another option: I saw a program about a factory in China that
| takes waste fruit and veg. They mash it up and feed it to
| billions of cockroaches. The cockroach excrement is used as
| fertiliser and the cockroaches are fed to chickens.
|
| It's very low tech. The greatest expense seemed to be a team of
| people picking plastic rubbish out of the incoming waste.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The greatest expense seemed to be a team of people picking
| plastic rubbish out of the incoming waste.
|
| This seems kind of unnecessary? The cockroaches will do the
| same job. (Well, the inverse job of picking the food out of
| the inedible trash.)
|
| I guess if you're harvesting the excrement, the trash might
| get in the way.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| Bits of plastic smaller than the maximum diameter of beetle
| poop are probably not going to be recognized and removed as
| plastic anyway.
|
| Just shake it all through some progressively finer screens
| and blow the remaining plastics off the tops of the screens
| with a blast of air.
|
| Perhaps the plastics would gum up the food-shredder?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Many people already have compost programs in their city, so
| it is trivial for them to stop throwing food in the trash._
|
| Really? I live in NYC and have never seen compost anywhere,
| except perhaps a community garden I'd have to walk to 20 blocks
| away, that is usually closed and locked? It's certainly not in
| my building or on the street or in any lunch restaurants I go
| to.
|
| Even with high-end sustainable chains, it seems you can't trust
| composting actually happens [1] -- and in any case, they make
| up a tiny tiny sliver compared to traditional fast food.
|
| I'm not sure where you live but "trivial" composting would
| appear to be a rare exception in the US. Since you seem to have
| it wherever you live, I'm curious how your city has made
| composting trivial for residents? What is the blueprint other
| cities should start following?
|
| [1] https://ny.eater.com/2020/1/16/21067009/sweetgreen-nyc-
| compo...
| edoceo wrote:
| West coast has three bins generally. Trash/landfill, recycle
| and compost.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| New York City has many, _many_ composting options: the city
| offers organic waste pickup (I don't know the details, but
| you'll see the brown and orange containers on trash pickup
| day), some food co-ops and green markets accept compost and,
| as you've mentioned, some community gardens also accept it.
|
| Most/all? Whole Foods also have a dedicated compost
| receptacle -- I have no idea what their policy on people
| depositing compost from outside the store is.
|
| Here's a link to GrowNYC compost drop-off locations:
| https://www.grownyc.org/compost/locations
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks, that's all very interesting. I can see how, if
| you're super-dedicated, you could save your organic trash
| and make a trip to bring it somewhere once a week or
| something.
|
| However, I'll stand by my point that it's anything but
| trivial. The city may offer organic waste pickup in theory,
| but not to my apartment building or any I've ever lived in.
| I've never even heard of it residentially.
|
| So spending, say, 20 minutes a week saving it and
| hygienically transporting the incredibly smelly contents on
| your subway commute, all for a small bag of apple cores,
| orange rinds, wilted greens and meat trimmings and such...
| seems like kind of an insane level of effort for a tiny
| return, no?
|
| I only see composting happening realistically at scale if a
| law is passed requiring every apartment building to provide
| a compost receptacle. And I'm honestly not sure how that
| could be made to work hygienically. Until then...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The city program is limited. Efforts to expand it have
| stalled due to issues with compost storage in apartments
| and rats. https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2018/oct/07/ick-rats-roa...
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Also I've found that every outdoor market that sells food
| will have at least one compost bin
| lapink wrote:
| I never get the argument that because we are not solving the
| entire problem at once we shouldn't make any step in the right
| direction. Changing mentalities is a big deal. Eventually it
| can trickle down to our entire way of life and make for a
| smooth (r)evolution, with no one missing the old world.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Token solutions that make people feel good but accomplish
| little or often make things worse distract attention and
| resources from real problems and significant problems.
| jamil7 wrote:
| Got any evidence to back that up? You're implying that
| wasting less food is somehow either distracting or taking
| resources away from real problems. In my experience it's
| the people doing nothing that are so quick to point fingers
| and find fault with every attempt at improving our
| situation.
| hurricanetc wrote:
| Good is the enemy of perfect. I see it all the time now in
| all ranges of things but especially in politics and climate
| change. People want to have their way and if they don't have
| their way they would prefer nothing at all.
| Flozzin wrote:
| It's easier to tear something down than to build something.
| This is why people write articles like this. They acknowledge
| the problem, claim to be on the 'correct' side of the issue
| and do nothing! It's not their fault all the options are bad.
| People like this continue the status quo while acting like
| they want to move to better solutions.
| 101404 wrote:
| Of course it is!
|
| But it looks really good if your goal is to be famous for being a
| "good person".
| zachware wrote:
| I've been working on this problem for a few years now. The
| problem is systemic. You can solve the retail/consumer level
| issues but the big problems are market-level.
|
| Here are a few facts often overlooked because they aren't
| surface-level.
|
| - 1.3 billion metric tons (2,866 billion pounds) of food
| worldwide are produced and not consumed each year, representing
| approximately one-third of total food production by volume (FAO,
| 2011).
|
| - Most importantly, nearly 40 percent of losses in North American
| fruits and vegetables occur at the farm and distributor
| level...before it gets to the consumer.
|
| - USDA ERS: "The inelastic nature of fresh produce demand causes
| prices to fluctuate rapidly due to changes in supply. Prices
| fluctuate daily and can often cause the value of edible product
| to drop below the marginal cost of production. Depending on where
| and when the price fluctuations occur, produce could be left in
| the field, discarded at a packing shed, or dumped from the back
| of a truck."
|
| - Growers today earn roughly 30 cents for every dollar their
| products command at the end-customer point.
|
| It's a market system problem. It's a middleman problem. It's an
| incentive problem.
|
| It's going to change but it will take time and a willingness to
| ignore sexy-looking things like Imperfect Produce and the like.
| ksec wrote:
| Where do you get these numbers and what count as a loss?
|
| Because what you are describing is ~50% of our Food produced
| are lost in the value chain. And being in the food industry I
| have never heard anything like that.
|
| I am assuming they are figures strictly for Fresh produces such
| as fruit and veg?
| the_watcher wrote:
| Can you clarify how ignoring things like Imperfect Produce
| helps? I'm open to it, but my impression was that Imperfect
| emerged simply because there _was_ perfectly edible food being
| discarded because it looked off (anyone who has lived in an
| area anywhere near industrial agriculture already knew this due
| to experience with someone showing up at a soccer game with a
| bunch of fresh strawberries that looked weird but tasted better
| than anything at Safeway).
| lonelappde wrote:
| It's a gimmick. If it were meaningful it would cost less than
| regular, as it already does as non-gimmick farmstands and
| low-end grocery stores that rich yuppies don't go to.
| neaden wrote:
| My understanding is that Imperfect Produce is, or at least is
| accused of, taking food that would have been donated to food
| banks or processed. So those weird looking strawberries were
| going to be made into Jam, not discarded.
| the_watcher wrote:
| Got it. No idea if those accusations are true or not but
| that is at least a potentially valid reason to ignore
| Imperfect as an effective solution to food waste.
| zachware wrote:
| Imperfect created a market for a good that already had a
| market and generally purchase from post-producer sellers.
| They aren't large enough to make a dent in the producers'
| waste.
|
| Theoretically it (or something like it) could create a
| viable market for the food whose cost goes below market
| price or is not pretty, but it would have to do it at the
| wholesale level. Not cases of produce but dozens of
| truckloads a week.
|
| In their particular case they are trying to make produce a
| D2C product so they have two challenges: a) build a market
| for a good and b) make D2C perishable profitable. For
| reference on b, see Blue Apron.
| zachware wrote:
| USDA: "60% of imperfect produce's products are sourced
| from traditional wholesale channels rather than farms."
| sct202 wrote:
| I used Imperfect Produce for a while and I'm not sure if it's
| actually helping that much. A lot of the produce didn't
| actually look different and they had a pretty consistent
| rotation of products which implied to me that it might not be
| excess. Kind of like how most outlet stores actually plan and
| manufacturer products specifically for the outlet.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Simply put, the premise of Imperfect Produce is incorrect.
| Except for some leafy greens (lettuce juice, anyone?), we
| have useful economic uses for second-tier produce.
|
| The food industry isn't dumb. Where do you think all the
| produce at Asian markets come from?
| vsareto wrote:
| A great example of why a post-scarcity economy will never
| happen. Only a miraculous invention (Replicators) will ever
| push production beyond a human consumption demand curve.
| jka wrote:
| Those are some staggering figures.
|
| Regarding the 40% loss rate pre-consumer - can you share any
| details of products and/or distribution methods which are
| succeeding in reducing that rate?
| zachware wrote:
| Honestly, not many. It's a marketplace problem. There is
| always demand _somewhere_ for a product that fits X taxonomy
| (eg. not perfect or at a lower cost due to market
| flucutations).
|
| The issue is that the market is so gummed up with middlemen
| that exposing the supply and demand marketwide in real-time
| is difficult. That's what I've been working to reverse
| engineer.
|
| One of the biggest improvements has come from on-site freeze
| packaging and the general improvements in cold storage tech.
|
| You can either increase the speed of info in the market or
| decrease the "cost" of lagging info in the form of increasing
| shelf life. Both reduce waste.
| peapicker wrote:
| The loss rate isn't 40%. It says, of the not-mentioned actual
| loss rate, that 40% of that rate occurs at the farm and
| distributors.
| jka wrote:
| Sigh; I did realize that but didn't phrase the comment
| clearly enough to ensure a display of understanding.
|
| 'Regarding the losses before produce reaches consumers (the
| 40% mentioned) ...' might have been a little clearer, if a
| bit unwieldy.
|
| The duplicate/misleading use of the word 'rate' at the end
| of the sentence also added extra confusion.
|
| English can be a surprisingly tricky language sometimes :)
| lacker wrote:
| This seems totally backwards. Americans in general are eating too
| much. Our society would be better off if people ate _less_ food
| and wasted _more_ of it.
| code_duck wrote:
| Ideally, if eating less food, they should produce less food.
|
| Even better, though, rather than throw it away, diverting it to
| people who lack sufficient food would be nice.
|
| You do have a point that occurred to me before... By the time
| you've purchased too much food and have it on your plate, it's
| not actually better to finish eating it versus throw it away.
| There's no advantage to obesity.
| war1025 wrote:
| The motto of people everywhere: "I want change as long as I
| don't have to change."
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Yes, there are limits. The food system sucks. But it sucks
| because people had become mindless about the system, the junk
| they're stuffing into their mouth, etc.
|
| If being aware of waste wakes some of them up then that's a step
| in the right direction. Sleeping people can't care.
| himinlomax wrote:
| A very effective way to reduce food waste is to make sure produce
| is not damaging during shipping and handling. You just need to
| wrap individual fruits and vegetables in a lot of plastic.
|
| Great way to save the planet!
|
| Green marketing is such a scam.
| aSplash0fDerp wrote:
| Its too early to add more "Mickey Mouse math" to "food stuff"
| waste, but humanity will need to figure out the math/processes to
| a self-sustaining food supply for space exploration and
| habitation, so the authors timing couldn't be better.
|
| Humanity has a valid excuse to cord-cut from much of the 20th
| century AG and water systems and see what combination of
| solutions that automation, more time (fewer jerbs) and scientific
| leaps bring to the table in the way of working models.
|
| Even if we don't get to explore space, we should at least get to
| see the quality of ingredients go up exponential as we start
| eating more "fresh off the vine" food in our daily meals as a
| byproduct of the research.
|
| If they can get the angle right and ride the coat-tails of space
| expansion, they'll cut thru decades of red-tape to bypass the
| existing infrastructure and entrenched investors to clear a path
| for sustainable agriculture research.
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