Friday Buffet

Semantics update: Don’t call it waste! After all, you wouldn’t throw away a resource, would you?

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Inmate gleaning?! Sure beats breaking rocks. Besides, how many license plates do states really need?photo by mister bisson via creative commons

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Here’s a study assessing the environmental impact of five different scenarios for handling food waste. It turns out that a garbage disposal is best, but that’s assuming your city or town has an anaerobic digester at its waste water treatment plant.

Oh, and by the way, the National Association of Heating-Plumbing-Cooling Contractors, no disinterested party, commissioned the study.

Useful info in the report: 75 percent of home waste goes down the disposal.

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Someone at Time Magazine has apparently seen Food, Inc. But the useful cover piece on the cost of cheap food gets into waste briefly on page four.

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Finally, not exactly food-waste-related, but it’s good to see some colleges cutting down on their overall waste footprint by turning to reusable takeout containers. Note, these aren’t for leftovers, but for when students want to take meals to go.

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2 Comments

  1. tg
    Posted August 21, 2009 at 11:06 am | Permalink

    Interesting that the UW study left out the home composting scenario. Somehow I think that if they had included backyard composting, it might have come out on top for the factors of cost to municipality, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

  2. Posted August 23, 2009 at 2:19 pm | Permalink

    I suspect you’re right, tg, but maybe they omitted backyard composting because they knew it wouldn’t be a solution for the majority of folks. Then again, look who commissioned the study.