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How did I not know there was a Discard Studies blog before now? A recent post features a fabulous array of infographics, or “theaters of proof.” Enjoy the show.

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Smart phones can help ensure food safety? And potentially let you see the cow your milk came from? Smile, Bessie! Or Cow 8261.

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Compost, trash or disposal? Easy decision, right? Not so much, as we learn in this helpful flow chart.

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A UK professor has the dirt on the EU’s strict standards for veggies.

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For those of you on Netflix–you can now instantly watch Dive! the quintessential American dumpster diving doc.

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No need for a caucus to determine that composting school food waste in Iowa makes sense!

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If you want to see some beautiful pictures of volunteers gleaning broccoli and cabbage, look no further.

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I’m pretty sure David Giles is my favorite dumpster-diving Australian-born PhD candidate in the U.S. He’s doing neat work examining how cultural assumptions about what is appetizing cause so much food waste and I can’t wait to see what his eventual book looks like.

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Finally…not to split hairs, but I don’t remember changing my last name. (And mid-article, too!)

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 add that environmental reason to reduce food waste to the existing list of ethical and economic ones.

But, wait–there’s more bad news! We individuals do not have as much agency as I’d hoped:

And by the time the food has reached you, the consumer, a lot of those emissions are already on their way to the atmosphere. Venkat says that nearly 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions come from producing and processing food.

Anyway, it’s quite helpful to have an estimate of food waste-related greenhouse gas emissions. If nothing else, it communicates that our waste impacts the environment.

Here’s the key line:

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted…

As you might guess from the above, the report distinguishes between loss and waste. I disagree with the study’s premise here–that ‘loss’ occurs on farms or in processing and ‘waste’ occurs at retail and homes–because it assumes no culpability before food reaches the retail setting.

Also, the report found that the level of waste is about the same in the developed and developing world. In the latter, poor infrastructure, farmers’ limited access to markets and a lack of refrigeration are mostly to blame.

On the whole, the study is an extremely valuable resource. Oh, and the FAO used a few of my photos in it. In fact, three of the four cover shots are mine (all from the Portland Metro waste facility).

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 the tons of “products generated.”

In 2009, food scraps made up–dramatic pause–20.8% of what we sent to the landfill. That marked the first time in recent history that we’ve definitively topped the 20%-mark, although last year technically did so, at 19.5%.

Zooming out, the percentage of landfill contents that is food doubled from 1980 to 2009. More than anything, that illustrates the improved recycling of most other goods (while composting languishes).

More bad news: food makes up a larger percentage of trash “generated.” It’s now 14.1%.

The one shimmering ray of, um, hope: food “recovery” (composting, mostly) rocketed from 2.4 to 2.5%.

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And in case you missed it, the USDA just released their every five-year Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010. Because of the above reading, I didn’t get through all 95 pages of this departmental step-in-the-right-direction. Fortunately, Marion Nestle did.

Anyway, I was heartened to see that even the two-page summary featured the recommendation to “avoid oversized portions.” You got that, restaurants??

It’s a mouthful, for sure. So what does it mean/contain? In short, the publication updates the USDA’s loss estimates for just about every food item you can imagine. It’s the study that I alluded to earlier that found that fresh pumpkin was the most wasted food in our homes (not a shocker).

FYI, by “consumer level,” the study refers to food both in our homes and away from our homes (at restaurants, schools, cafeterias, hospitals, etc.).  The reasons for this waste, which doesn’t include inedible stuff like peels, cores or bones, include:

• Losses during cooking and preparation
• Discards due to preparation of too much food
• Expired use-by dates
• Spoilage
• Plate waste

It’s fun to take a stroll through the 123 pages (OK, ‘fun’ may not be the right word) to see how much of each food we waste and how much the estimates have changed. So have a look. And keep in mind that the authors are looking for feedback on the estimates–don’t be shy about giving it!

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. It has a decent mix of rural and urban, agricultural and industrial (including food production).

Most interesting, to me, is the breakdown of waste down by the source. This is extremely useful, as it’s one of the only sources I know of that gives a sense of how wasteful each part of the food chain really is.

The part that really stands out is this:

…60% of food waste was generated by consumers

But what exactly does that mean? In Griffin’s study, the consumer segment includes homes, schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes. But doing a little arithmetic (always a dangerous thing for yours truly), I deduced that homes produce 40% of the county’s food waste.

On the one hand–Damn, that’s a lot!!

On the other hand, if you ever wanted to feel empowered, that’s a powerful statistic.

It’s in our hands. You and I can reduce the amount of food waste our cities, counties and states produce simply by keeping a better eye on our own cupboards and fridges.

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.

They found that the average American wastes 1,400 kilocalories a day. [Kilocalorie is another word for food calorie.]

The problem is that the wording used in the Economist and repeated by The Times is a bit misleading. It’s not that average person wastes that much each day, but that the per capita waste is 1,400 calories.

Basically, the researchers found the total waste from the food chain and divide it by the population to give it some perspective.

I asked the head researcher, Kevin Hall, a nice guy from what I can tell, and he agreed that the wording was confusing. So that’s the good news for Friday–we don’t each waste 1400 calories every day; we have plenty of help throughout the food chain.

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Secondly, I’m off to England tonight to do some research and hopefully enjoy a pint or two. It’ll be the first time I answer “both” to the ‘Business or pleasure?’ question.

Anyway, what that means for you all is that next week’s posts are up in the air. I hope to write some from the road, but no promises.

In case I don’t post, think of it this way: the book will be all the better for the trip. Cheers!

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In their coverage of the above study, the CBC has a basic poll you can take: Will you change your food habits based on these findings?

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Weekly compost collection by bike? Now that’s pretty green. Trinity Green, in fact (from my home town of Durham).

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The masterminds at Love Food, Hate Waste have created a new feature: myth-busting freezer tips from the Arctic Aunt.

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And on a personal note, thanks to our gracious Thanksgiving hosts Dan and Amy for not only creating a delicious feast, but sending us home with plenty of leftovers, ensuring that all will be eaten. In our house, I’ll be the one ensuring nothing goes to waste…