Food Waste and Global Warming: the Unfortunate Connection

Guess how many years it took planet Earth to get from a population of 6 billion to today’s figure of 7 billion.  Only 13 years!  With population growth speeding along at that rate, the news media keep asking how we’re going to have enough food for all these folks.  Considering the seriousness of the matter, it’s more than disconcerting to read the statistics on how much food is wasted in the U.S.  And there’s even more concern about discarded food because it’s been linked to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The following piece gives you some figures that document how food waste affects global warming.  We can assume that as the population grows, so will the impact of food waste on global warming increase—unless we can manage to discard less food. At the end of this article, there’s a link to a Shelf Life Advice article on how to do just that.

How much food do Americans waste each year?  According to a study reported by NPR,  it’s about 55 million tons.  According to the Sierra Club’s website, we dump about 33-35 million tons of it into landfills. Let’s hope a significant amount of wasted food is composted.   

The 55 million statistic being quoted by the news media comes from a company called CleanMetrics, which (says NPR) “builds software that does life cycle analysis  for organizations who want to measure and reduce their environmental impact.”  The company’s president and founder, Kumar Venkat, gathered USDA’s estimates of food loss for 2009 and crunched the numbers in his computer.  Here are the results:

-Americans are wasting 40% of the nation’s food supply.  (That’s the 55 million tons.)

-Food waste is responsible for 135 million tons of greenhouse gases, about 1.5% of the total emissions.

-The average American family wastes enough food to cause 1,800 lbs. of emissions.

-The average individual in the U.S. creates about 440 pounds of emissions annually.

-The average car emits about 9,000 lbs. of greenhouse gases.  (Maybe if you don’t own a   car, you don’t have to feel quite so guilty about the food you throw out.)

We waste more of some kinds of foods than others.  For example, about 35% of the chicken, fish, and fruit produced gets wasted but only 15% of the nuts and legumes.  (Seems logical that foods that don’t spoil quickly are more likely to get eaten.) Furthermore, some foods—for example, beef—have a bigger impact on the climate. Tomatoes have much less.

The Sierra Club website presents the following bad news: “”Landfills in the United States contribute around17% of our total global warming methane, which itself accounts for about 10% of the global warming gas generated in the United States, stated in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents.”  The Sierra Club points out that the amount of methane produced by food waste is complicated to calculate.  Most of the methane comes from car emissions; an assessment of the impact of food waste depends in part upon how much fuel is needed to get discarded food from residences to a landfill.

Some positive comments from the Sierra Club:  Many dumps burn off their methane or channel it to run electric generators.  A few even use their landfill’s methane to run their garbage trucks.  There are sometimes ingenious solutions to problems that at first seem insurmountable.

You don’t need to remember the statistics or understand the science behind air pollution concerns. The obvious conclusion is that wasted food isn’t good for your budget or for the environment. Want to know how to cut down on food waste?  For excellent suggestions from experts, click on the link below:  

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/how-avoid-wasting-food-home

Source(s):

npr.org “How That Food You Throw Out Is Linked to Global Warming”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/10/07/141123243/how-that-food-you-throw-out-is-linked-to-global-warming

sierraclub.com “How Much Global Warming Methane from Food Waste?”
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/mrgreen/2011/07/how-much-global-warming-methane-from-food-waste.html