On the heels of Friday’s major outcry against waste by the EU Parliament, the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization spoke out against food waste this weekend. In other words, this issue is picking up steam. — — How did I not know there was a Discard Studies blog before now? A recent [...]
Here’s an updated version of the study tracking the US climate impact of food waste. Food waste represents 1.5% of greenhouse gas emissions? Sounds about right… — — A UK professor has the dirt on the EU’s strict standards for veggies. — — For those of you on Netflix–you can now instantly watch Dive! the [...]
Finally! Someone quantified just how much greener it is to reduce food waste than to compost it. The Stockholm Environmental Institute found that avoiding waste has 30 times the benefit of composting, when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. — — If you want to see some beautiful pictures of volunteers gleaning broccoli and cabbage, [...]
1.5 percent. That’s the percentage of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions stemming from wasted food, according to CleanMetrics. It’s not a massive figure, but consider this: The average person’s food waste contributes almost 5 percent of the emissions of the typical car. And 1.5 percent is a conservative estimate, as it doesn’t include restaurant waste. So [...]
Yesterday, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization released a very interesting report on global food waste. It contains mind-boggling new statistics, calls international attention to the issue and serves as a prelude to the SaveFood! conference next week in Germany. Here’s the key line: Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for [...]
Last week, the EPA released the latest version of its Municipal Solid Waste report. It’s a big occasion in these parts. If you’re like me, you eschew the fact sheet for the 189-page full report. Because the latter includes the all-important “products discarded” (on page 94). That represents what’s dumped in landfills, after recycling reduces [...]
It’s not every year you get a new USDA study on food waste! 2011 is off to a great start with the recent release of Consumer-Level Food Loss Estimates and Their Use in the ERS Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data. It’s a mouthful, for sure. So what does it mean/contain? In short, the publication updates the [...]
I recently revisited a study on one community’s food waste. More specifically, an Analysis of a Community Food Waste Stream (The full study isn’t available for free, unfortunately). The study tallies the food wasted in upstate New York’s Tompkins County. The county seems fairly representative, as the lead author Mary Griffin told me by email. [...]
I’ve been excited to see the press that Kevin Hall et al’s study has received. You know, the one that found that America wastes 40 percent of its food. It was featured in The Economist and then The New York Times “Idea of the Day” blog repeated the findings with a quote from the former. [...]
A new study by a team of National Institute of Health researchers has some fascinating findings. After analyzing USDA and FAO data, the team of researchers found that US per capita food waste has increased by 50 percent since 1974. More interesting, they found that we now waste 40 percent of our available food supply. [...]
