Food as Fuel
April 17th, 2008 by Jonathan
Somewhere, Doc Brown is smiling. OK, OK, he’s a
fictional character from Back to the Future, but still…
If Metro Vancouver gets its way, it will soon build a plant to convert food waste to fuel. Instead of fueling Deloreans like Doc B did, the plant could power municipal vehicles. Apparently, this is done in Sweden with confiscated booze.
Taking a step back, many worry about the negative impact of biofuels like ethanol. Biofuels production brings a net increase in Greenhouse gas emissions when carbon-absorbing forests and grasslands are burned to yield more cropland. And the competition between food and fuel, among other factors, has sparked serious food price inflation.
That’s why the Vancouver plan makes perfect sense: why not produce biofuel from food that’s just going to be sent to the landfill? Doing so won’t consume any more farm land or the oil and chemicals needed to grow and transport ethanol crops.
But, there’s some debate over the best use for inedible food waste. Some prefer composting. Others would rather see it create energy (via anaerobic digestion) or fuel. Any of these options would be better than the status quo–sending it to the landfill.
BTW, only 2.2 percent of food waste is “recycled” (i.e. doing one of the above options–see page 7).
Stumble it! | Posted in Technology, Waste Stream, Energy |
But why waste food in the first place?
If we throw away 25-30% of our food, we increase the price it costs, cause greenhouse gas pollution in the transportation and disposing of it and deny the Third World any benefit when they are starving while we consume produce from their countries.
This scheme sounds as though it gives the green light to wasting food, “it’s OK to waste food, it’s going to make fuel for our cars!” while in fact using (consuming) all the food that we buy rather than dumping it would reduce world food price inflation and increase the food supply.
We should be feeding people, NOT our cars.
I can’t resist: You’re preaching to the choir, Father.
I’m in complete agreement with all of your points, except one. There’s a difference between using crops or even agricultural land to create fuel and using food that will just be sent to the landfill.
We can certainly reduce the amount of food that’s wasted. Yet, we’re never going to be completely efficient with our edibles. People will always buy or order too much, items will go bad, etc. Why not capitalize on that inevitable food waste? It’s different than converting corn to ethanol.
This is going to give away my age here, but I arrived in the world at the end of WW2.
There was rationing until I was seven in 1952 and food was certainly not plentiful. Any household food waste was then was so minimal, vegetable peelings etc, that it could not be used for anything other than to be put on the on compost heap.
I would agree 100% that most people today buy more food than needed and so waste it and the supermarket’s waste must be enormous, but the key word here is waste and that is where I personally have the problem.
Like you I find it hard to accept waste on any level and like you I do think that if we cut down on waste we would use the land we have for food production far more efficiently.
We may never have rationing again as I knew it, but already we are seeing, in the UK at least, rationing by price as the cost of some items (eggs and bread for example) increases.
As we are both aware, we have passed ‘Peak Food’ just as we have passed ‘Peak Oil’. Rationing by price will be just as effective as rationing by coupon was, because the public in general will then have to value the food they buy, as we had to in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Then what will happen to that plant in Vancouver when the amount of food we waste is cut to a minimal level?
Sadly cheap food was like cheap oil, never to be valued by the majority until too late.