Emulate South Korea’s policy on food waste, for a start – Asia Times
According to an old saying, everyone talks about the wind but no one actually does anything about it. Before South Korea attempted it, the same could be said about foods misuse, or something else. More on that test in a minute.
The data everyone has been quoting has essentially remained the same for what seems to have been years: A third of the food produced by farmers around the world is wasted. Oh, sure, sometimes the number is nearer 30 %, sometimes 40 %. However, it usually falls within a few percent details of a second.
If somebody is doing something about it, therefore, it’s not working.
Institutions insist that they want to lower the bar. In June, for instance, the Biden administration put out a “fact plate” listing what it’s done about the issue and what it plans to do.
Some of these suggestions seem fine, such as easing the constraints on giving food to food businesses or clarifying the definition of “best by” dates. Whether they’ll walk the needle substantially off a second is debatable.
It seems food waste is n’t a problem governments are well-equipped to solve. In developing countries, some of what producers raise never makes it to one’s board. Poor transit and lack of cooling cause the produce to suffer. Fixing these problems costs money developing-country governments do n’t have.
Big restaurant components and the unwillingness of many consumers to purchase unhealthy foods are two examples of waste in wealthy nations. Governments can raise awareness, but they ca n’t make people eat all the food they buy or give what they do n’t eat to someone who does n’t have enough.
The injury in wasting food is not just the wasted money or the unused opportunities to provide for the thirsty. What happens to foods waste is a less visible damage.
If it’s buried in waste, it releases methane, which is 20 to 30 times worse than carbon monoxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. Wasted food accounts for 24 % of municipal solid waste in the United States, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, making up the single most landfilled material in the country.
Compost or disposal are other options to waste. Both are great thoughts. Neither is a cure. According to what South Korea has done with them, as reported late in the Washington Post, one of the negative effects of food waste can be reversed.
Methane is the injury that the Koreans have abated. ” When South Korea started tackling this problem 20 years ago, it threw away 98 % of its food waste”, the Post reported. ” Today, 98 % of food waste is turned into feed, compost or energy, according to the South Korean Ministry of Environment”.
To put that in perspective, in the US only 40 % of food waste is recycled or composted.
To complete the alter, South Korea banned food scraps from waste. Everyone is required to maintain food waste and additional recyclables out of the garbage.
And South Koreans pay for the opportunity. Some people purchase waste bags from the state and place filled bags in garbage trucks along the streets. When trash is weighed in their room complexes, people record it on digital cards. Those found separating their meal spare are subject to fines.
Many of what’s collected is converted into renewable energy. Daejeon, a town of 1.5 million persons 85 miles north of Seoul, recycles 400 lots of food spend every moment into power that power and heats 20, 000 homes.
Composting is smaller. South Korea’s farmers do n’t like using food-waste compost as animal feed or fertilizer, it smells bad, has high levels of sodium and may contain the occasional toothpick.
All this suggests South Korea is certainly “doing something” about foods waste. What it is n’t doing, however, is cutting down on the quantity of it. Despite the problem and cost of citizens having to recycle it, the Post reported that the amount of food spare produced annually, which is about 5.5 million tons, has no significantly decreased over the past five years.
South Korea turned to recycling and composting because it has a population that is almost 52 million people, which is roughly equal to the number of people in Florida and Texas combined, and has an area that is the length of Indiana. South Koreans were complaining about odory waste and opposed to local incinerators.
Researchers doubt that South Korea, which has much more land and has fewer people per square mile, can achieve this feat. New York City, a densely populated city, has been attempting to promote compost, but its program just ran into financial difficulties.
However, if knockoff refiners and composters are unable to reduce food waste to the third stage like South Korea, significant sums of money will continue to go down the drain and some people will continue to get hungry.
These are issues that someone needs to address.
Previous lifelong Wall Street Journal Asia journalist and editor , Urban Lehner , is writer professor of DTN/The Progressive Farmer.
This , content,  , previously published on , September 2 , by the latter news business and then republished by Asia Times with authority, is © Copyright 2024 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved. Follow , Urban Lehner , on , X @urbanize
