Addressing food waste is a major challenge that the United States has already addressed. In 2015, the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it was not the only one to be able to do so. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (EPA) have set a goal of reducing food waste in part by 2030, but the country has made little progress, Claudia Fabiano said. who works on food waste control for the EPA.
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This photo shows crushed bioproducts stacked before being transported to an anaerobic digester at a GreenWaste renewable energy digestion facility in San Jose, Calif. , on Oct. 27, 2023. ((AP Photo/Jeff Chiu))
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“We have a long way to go,” Fabiano said.
Researchers say the EPA reports provide much-needed information. A report shows that 58% of methane emissions from landfills come from food waste, a major challenge because methane is to blame for about a quarter of global warming and has a much higher warming potential than carbon dioxide.
Once the magnitude of the challenge is defined, some elected officials and researchers hope to take action. But they say this will require not only an investment of resources, but also a fundamental shift in mindset on the part of the public. To replace some practices, brands might want to rethink how they package and market their products, and Americans might want to find solutions to food waste.
Thus, for the first time since the 1990s, the EPA has updated its classification of preferred methods for waste reduction, ranging from completely preventing food waste (by not generating or buying food in the first place) to composting or anaerobic digestion, a procedure by which food waste can be converted to biogas inside a reactor. Prevention is still the number one strategy, but the new rating includes more nuances comparing characteristics so communities know how to prioritize their investments.
But reducing waste requires a fundamental mental shift and lifestyle upgrade on people’s part, no matter what. Researchers say families are to blame for at least 40% of food waste in the United States.
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It’s more urgent than ever, said Weslynne Ashton, a professor of environmental monitoring and sustainability at the Illinois Institute of Technology, who isn’t concerned about the EPA’s reports. Americans have been conditioned to expect abundance in retail grocery stores and on their plates. , and it’s expensive to get all that food out of the creek.
“I think it’s conceivable to put 0 bio-waste in landfills,” Ashton said. “But it does mean that we want the infrastructure to allow this in other places in cities and more rural areas. This means that we want incentives for families and business institutions. “
Once the problem has been explained and quantified, it remains to be seen whether communities and states will receive more help or guidance from the federal level, and what replacement they can make in some way. Recently, the EPA funneled some of the money from the Inflation Reduction Program. Act to support recycling, which included investments for biowaste, but those are new programs.
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Some local governments have been working on this factor for some time. California began requiring all jurisdictions to provide biowaste collection facilities starting in 2022, but others are already ahead. Chicago, for example, just introduced a citywide composting pilot program two weeks ago, which has created problems with delivering loose food waste throughout the city. But potential users have to bring their own food scraps.
Ning Ai, an associate professor of urban policy and planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the report can also be bolstered through more explicit data on how other communities can adopt localized solutions, as preventing food waste would likely be another measure. rural and urban areas in other parts of the country. But she was also inspired by the report’s highlighting of trade-offs between the environmental effects between air, water and land, which she says aren’t so aggressively documented.
“These two reports, as well as some of the older ones, obviously stand out as a spice for the national push for reduction,” said Ai, who is not interested in the EPA’s research.