USA - "Call To Action" To Reduce Food Waste

The USA held an important summit recently to address the announcements a few months back from the US Government on reducing food waste in the US.

U.S. EPA Assistant Administrator  Mathy Stanislaus announced a "Call To Action" to help meet the U.S. EPA's and U.S. Department of Agriculture's goal to reduce food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2030.

Stanislaus issued the Call To Action during the Closing Plenary of the Food Recovery Summit, held November 16-18 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. "We want to announce an Action Plan to meet the goal on Earth Day 2016," he stated. "What has to be done to meet this goal? What has to change? We are seeking a diverse plan made by representatives of all sectors of the food life cycle."

Stanislaus and other EPA officials participated in sessions and roundtables throughout the summit. They emphasized that EPA is open to new and "disruptive" ideas and strategies to prevent wasted food, increase food recovery, and assist in development of processing infrastructure for nonedible food. "We are pushing all of you to help develop a concrete plan that you can sign on to and commit your resources [to implement]," concluded Stanislaus.

There has also been some acknowledgment in Australia that we also need to also primarily reduce food waste in our country, and to better address  - successfully  - how to deal with the food waste generated.  Technologies are reasonably readily available, only requiring suitable adaptation and scheme specific design.

One can think of concepts such as anaerobic digestion, composting and co-composting of food and other organic wastes [ at home and commercially], even waste to energy schemes as all playing some part in better utilising the wasted foods.  Individual circumstances will drive the options.

It is better to reduce the initial waste where possible and even better management of unused foods in conjunction with food bank groups does help in reducing food wastes.

There has not been the serious and concerted push as seen in the US here in Australia so far to reduce food waste, with most western countries having greater food waste in the post production sector rather than during production. 

We can all do more though, to reduce food wastage, especially now with the festive season approaching and a trend to excess food being available.  Of major importance is the front end of the cycle – the reduction of actually avoiding the proliferation of food available that most people know may often go to waste.

Recycling Coffee Pods??

This topic has developed a bit of heat recently, as consumers beat up the place about how terrible it is not to recycle those pesky coffee pods that are now proliferating across many countries.

This appeared recently and is a reasonable summary of the US story.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/06/coffee-pods-waste-recycling/

But wait.........our house has several of the machines, and it has never been an issue.  Yes, we use aluminium ones from a major supplier.  But they get recycled as per normal, even with the grounds in them.  They do not weigh much and recyclers do not worry.  Why you ask?

used coffee pods

Aluminium is heated to melt as part of recycling..................so guess what?  The coffee pod item is crushed, some coffee spills out, some does not, and the aluminium mass is then heated ......the organic residual that is the coffee grounds burns off in that process.  Hey presto ...........clean aluminium that can be poured for another ingot of aluminium - ready for reuse.

Sure, slightly simplified, but surely with an aluminium pod, where the metal is recyclable many times, almost indefinitely ........It Is NOT An Issue!

Maybe with plastic it might be, but there are systems you can refill yourself, with your own selection of coffee.  Been around for a number of years, and Di Bella sells them.  See www.mydibellacoffee.com.au .

Storm in  a coffee cup?

Recycling is BETTER

Many working in the waste industry including recycling tend to believe that recycling is a better option.

Now there is Australian data to back that up.  Recycling is BETTER.  More jobs in that sector, substantial energy savings - 241 million Gjoules per year, plus water and greenhouse gas generation savings.

These are substantial benefits.

Yet in the NT we seem to be stuck in a time warp, with little progress other than send it to landfill.  Even the greenwaste is inadequately managed with the monster piles created in Darwin inadequately dealt with to use productively as a source of nutrients and carbon for agriculture, mining site rehabilitation and similar issues, including simple issues of land cover to protect the surface from erosion and the loss of soil into waterways.  Come on construction companies.......you can do better, so can the landfill site operators.

Mulch is expected to be in short supply in both WA and SA in future years if not already, due to significant market development by commercial companies and use of product in both commercial and domestic horticulture and agriculture. 

Then there are other materials such as glass and metals.  The latter are valuable and there is an effort to recycle generally, but what of glass and used tyres?  Both have had commercial development yet are not embraced.  Used tyres especially are a valuable component for civil construction and erosion management [ see www.ecoflex.com.au ].  Locally there has been a recent report on using glass in civil construction - but is it happening?  So far, it seems no.

Locally we can do much better.

There is a link to the full report below. However, one view of the report is that it has excluded any details on tyre recycling, data on organics recycling is somewhat dated and it lacks much direction on where the industry might go.  A lot of collated data, but I am not sure how useful it really might be, although it fills a lot of report space.
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Recycling trumps landfills
A new report confirms the Australian recycling sector is a bigger employer and generates more revenue than the landfill sector, but significant barriers remain to its growth and development.

These figures come as results of the release of the Australian Recycling Sector Report, prepared by consultancy Net Balance for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

The lengthy and far-reaching report covers recycling processes and markets, the economic value of the industry, its environmental benefits, the regularity environment, standards, industry barriers, data collection and a future outlook.

Australian Council of Recycling CEO Rod Welford said the study "confirms [recycling] generates more jobs than landfill". Key aspects of the report are summarised below.

Volumes and dollars
The report draws on the most recent figures reporting that 26 million tonnes of material was recycled in Australia in 2008/2009. The study quoted the Inside Waste Industry Report 2011-2012, noting from this volume the value of recycling in Australia was around $6.145 billion.

Most of this revenue (50% or so) is attributed to the sale of recovered materials, but the report cautions markets are highly variable. More than half ($3.8 billion) of the revenue from recycling was generated in NSW and Victoria.

The contribution of the recycling sector to Australian employment is estimated at a little less than 1% - meaning approximately 22,000 people (full time equivalents) are employed in recycling in Australia.

This equates to 9.2 full time employees for every 10,000 tonnes of waste processed.

Environmental Benefit
While recycling remains a relatively small employer in Australia, the report makes clear the environmental benefits of recycling are considerable.

In total, the report estimates recycling generate approximately 241,000,000 GJ-equivalent of energy savings. This is enough energy to power around five million homes.

Other key environmental savings estimated include 172 gigalitre of water, equivalent to 10% of Australia's water consumption and 15 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions as a carbon dioxide equivalent.

Barriers to improvement
A summary of the barriers impeding greater recycling put a lack of investment in recycling and limited infrastructure as the primary challenges facing the sector.

A lack of business recycling uptake, the distance of materials to markets and consumer behaviour are also key barriers.

The full report can be downloaded from the DSEWPC website. Further information on the Australian recycling industry is also available in the Inside Waste Industry Report 2011-2012.