Tumgik
#food waste
Text
Each year, a staggering 18 billion chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows either die or are killed without making it onto someone's plate. Environmental scientists Juliane Klaura, Laura Scherer, and Gerard Breeman were the first to calculate this number on a global scale. "Reducing these numbers would not only prevent unnecessary animal suffering but also contribute to the fight against climate change." A lot of our food ends up in a bin instead of on a plate. About a third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted. But never before has it been calculated how many animals die each year before ending up as food waste. The researchers examined the worldwide production and consumption of six of the most common domesticated animals and calculated that 18 billion animals go to waste every year. That equals 52.4 million tons of bone-free, edible meat. That's roughly one-sixth of all the meat produced globally.
519 notes · View notes
thoughtportal · 11 months
Video
things you can freeze
2K notes · View notes
samwisethewitch · 3 months
Text
How I Get the Most Out of Meat When Cooking
Tumblr media
As someone who 1.) was 100% vegetarian for ethical/religious reasons until very recently, and 2.) recently had to reintroduce meat for vitamin deficiency reasons, limiting waste as much as possible when I cook with meat is really important to me. For one thing, I feel like I owe it to the animal that died to get as much use as possible out of its body as a way of honoring its death. For another, meat is expensive (ethically raised meat even more so) and I want to get my money's worth.
I recently bought a bunch of lamb for my family's holiday dinner, so I wanted to share my attempt to practice the Honorable Harvest in my meat consumption. This is new to me, but I wanted to document the attempt because it's been a fun learning process for me! If you want to actually learn about honorable consumption I encourage you to read the works of Robin Wall Kimmerer and other indigenous ecologists, since the Honorable Harvest is based on indigenous North American practices. (Though there are other cultural practices all over the world.)
Step One: Sourcing the Meat
I am very fortunate to have enough disposable income to buy ethically raised meat, which tends to be more expensive. This is a privilege. Other people are not able to spend this extra money on their meat, and that doesn't make me better than them. Feeding yourself is morally neutral, and a tight budget is not a moral failing. Most meat alternative products (Beyond Beef, Impossible, etc.) are also pretty expensive. If the factory-farmed meat at the supermarket is the only thing in your budget, use that.
If you DO have some extra funds, local farms are a great place to source meat. The reason we had lamb for the holidays is because a local farm recently culled their herd and had lamb on sale. In the past we've gotten beef from a relative who raises cattle. I encourage you to learn about farms in your area and what they have to offer. CSAs and farmers' markets are great places to start. You can also ask around at local restaurants about where they source their ingredients.
When I say "ethically raised meat," what I'm really talking about is pasture-raised animals. Cage-free animals may not live in cages, but they can still be kept in cramped, dirty, inhumane conditions and be sold as "cage free." Pasture-raised animals are able to graze and forage and generally wander around within a paddock. For some animals like chickens you can also look for "free range," which means the animals are unfenced and are able to wander freely. Since I don't cook meat often, I try to get free range or pasture-raised meat when I do buy it.
In some areas, you may also be able to find certified ethically slaughtered meat, which means the slaughtering process has been designed to cause as little suffering to the animal as possible. That kind of certification isn't really available where I live, but it might be for you!
And of course, hunting or fishing yourself is also an option. If you kill the animal yourself, you know exactly how it died and can take steps to limit suffering as much as possible. Hunting isn't a skillset I have, but if you do more power to you!
Step Two: Cooking the Meat
This is the easy part. Depending on the cut of meat you got and the dish you are cooking, you may need to remove bones or trim fat, but aside from that it's just following a recipe.
For our holiday lamb stew, I used this recipe. I have Celiac disease, so I subbed gluten-free flour and replaced the beer with red wine. I also added rosemary and garlic for a more Mediterranean flavor to compliment the wine.
Step Three: Organs and Bones
This is where the breakdown is for a lot of Americans. We don't cook with bones or organs very often, and we tend to throw away whatever parts of the animal we don't want. That is not honorable consumption. Part of the Honorable Harvest is using every part of the being that died to feed you.
Most organs make great stew meat. My favorite Nicaraguan beef stew is made with tongue, and my indigenous Hawaiian relatives make stew with pig feet. And while I don't like them, lots of my Southern family members love chitlins (pickled pig intestines). Lots of cultures eat organs, and you'll find plenty of delicious recipes if you look!
Bones are typically used to make stock, which can be used as a base for future soups and stews. There are lots of recipes for DIY stocks and broths, but I usually fry some onions and/or garlic, deglaze with wine, and then add the meat/bones and the water, plus salt, pepper, and herbs for flavor. Most animal bones can produce two batches of stock before they lose flavor. (For really flavorful stock, leave some meat on the bones.)
Once the stock is done, you'll still have bones to deal with. Contrary to popular belief, cooked bones are not safe for dogs to chew on. (But raw bones usually are!) Instead, I strip any remaining meat and gristle from the stock bones, give those scraps to my pups as a treat, and then use the stripped bones for something else. With a little extra processing, the bones can be used as a fertilizer in a garden, a calcium supplement for chickens, or a safe treat for dogs and/or cats.
This was my first time processing bones, but after boiling them for, like, 12 hours in water with salt and vinegar, they were soft enough to break apart with my hands. I'm going to grind them to make bone meal.
250 notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 8 months
Text
"Of South Korea’s countless kilograms of annual food scraps, very few will ever end up in a landfill. This is because of two reasons—the first is that it’s been illegal since 2005, and the second is because they have perhaps the world’s most sophisticated food waste disposal infrastructure.
While representing a significant burden on the economy, the food waste disposal nevertheless produces ample supplies of animal feed, fertilizer, and biogas that heats thousands of homes.
As the New York Times’ John Yoo and Chang Lee reported from Seoul, South Korean cuisine tends to lend itself to creating food scraps, since many staple dishes come with anywhere from a few to a few dozen sides.
With the culture erring on the side of abundance rather than restraint, many of these small dishes of tofu, kimchi, bean sprouts, and other bites would be tossed in the landfill if it wasn’t illegal to do so.
The government put the ban hammer on it because the mountainous terrain isn’t ideal for landfill construction.
Instead, restauranteurs and street hawkers pay the municipality for a sticker that goes on the outside of special bins. Once filled with food scraps, they are left on the road for collectors in the morning who take 90% of all such waste in the country to specialized collection facilities.
At apartments and among residential housing areas, hi-tech food waste disposal machines are operated by a keycard owned by residents under contract with the disposal companies.
Once taken to the recycling facilities, the food is sorted for any non-food waste that’s mixed in, drained of its moisture, and then dried and baked into a black dirt-like material that has a dirt-like smell but which is actually a protein and fiber-rich feed for monogastric animals like chickens or ducks.
This is just one of the ways in which the food scraps are processed. Another method uses giant anaerobic digestors, in which bacteria break down all the food while producing a mixture of CO2 and methane used to heat homes—3,000 in a Seoul suburb called Goyang, for example. All the water needed for this chemical process comes from the moisture separated from the food earlier.
The remaining material is shipped as fertilizer to any farms that need it.
All the water content is sent to purification facilities where it will eventually be discharged into water supplies or streams.
While one such plant was shut down from locals complaining about the unbearable smell, many plants are odorless, thanks to a system of pipes built into the walls that eliminate it via chemical reaction.
It’s the way South Korea does it. Sure, it costs them around $600 million annually, but they have many admirers, including New York City which hopes to implement similar infrastructure in the coming years."
-via Good News Network, June 15, 2023
489 notes · View notes
Text
The disposal of truckloads of apparently edible oranges at a Metro Vancouver transfer station is highlighting concerns about food waste.
Sonia Rivest, who works as a gardener, began to see the massive piles of oranges show up at the North Vancouver transfer station in early November.
“I just assumed it was fruit that either had gone bad or had some kind of biological issue,” she told Global News.
“It was shocking. Maybe even the next week I saw it again, and I was like, ‘OK, maybe there is a really big amount that went poor and could not be sold or used safely,’ again assuming there was a good reason this was happening.”
As far as Rivest has been able to discern, that wasn’t the case.
Full article
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
249 notes · View notes
strangebiology · 3 months
Text
I'm working on the livestock chapter of Carcass now, specifically the subsection on waste. Here is a study about how about one-quarter of the animals raised and killed for meat in the sample year of 2019 were never even eaten.
149 notes · View notes
balkanradfem · 4 months
Text
Lately I've been pleased whenever I find a way to make use of something that would otherwise get thrown away; for instance, I learned that you can use scrunched-up aluminium foil to scrub pans and pots, instead of that ball of wire you can buy!
The walnuts that you can't completely clean out of shells, are a great bird snack, who can get their beaks in there. Fruit that is starting to go bad/already has gone bad, is a great food for butterflies. Any food that's starting to get rotten can be a great addition to a compost pile and a snack for any worm. Citrus peels can be used to infuse vinegar to make nice-smelling cleaning solution. Or they can be made into sugared candy! Lemon slices that make a great winter decoration, can be used as a halloween decoration later when they turn black. Any small carboard box you have can be used for organizing, and if you have a big one, you can put a wooden board on it and create a little shelf to put plants on! An old cracked aquarium can be used as a little greenhouse, or an extra shelf on top of a surface. Old newspapers and old clothing can be cut into strips or tubes, and weaved into baskets. Old paper egg cartons can be soaked, blended and then turned into paper. Any plastic container can get a hole at the bottom and grow a plant in it.
Please tell me more things that you know how to reuse that would otherwise just be thrown away! I want more of this knowledge.
152 notes · View notes
mapsontheweb · 5 months
Photo
Tumblr media
Each person in the EU generated an average of 130 kilograms of food per year in 2020. Cyprus had the highest amount of food waste per capita, at around 400 kg. By contrast, Croatia and Slovenia had a far lower waste output per person, at 71 and 68 kilograms, respectively.
by StatistaCharts
91 notes · View notes
scumsucking · 9 months
Text
On this Prime Day let's take a minute to remember how Amazon also owns Whole Foods and this is just a glimpse of a systemic problem that should indeed radicalize you. None of this should have happened, nor should the employee be held responsible for the company's unconscionable policies
Tumblr media
212 notes · View notes
ecopunkbeginner · 26 days
Text
What'll happen if I just...put my food scraps in a random container right now and gradually turn it into a more proper compost thing? How quickly will I need to do something else to it to have it become something vaguely useful?
Unnecessary info: I always hate throwing food scraps away, but today I had such a nice experience eating berries outside and when I walked around outside I actually felt positive feelings which hasn't happened really at all recently? So it felt so incorrect to walk away without at least returning the remnants to nature rather than chucking them in the trash. But I don't have the materials or executive function to do anything besides....Put It Somewhere. I thought about putting it in one of the random plants outside, but it feels questionable to just shove my food scraps in someone else's plants. Idk how you're choosing to raise your plants, idek if something bad could happen. Maybe the lemon tree, since it's already got lemons on the ground around it, but again, it's still Not Mine and very much Is Someone Else's. Whatever I end up doing, it'll probably need to be contained to a....container, and a pretty small (and definitely cheap) one at that, because I'm renting a room here, it's functionally Not My Yard, and the yard is 92% concrete. I'm just keeping the bowl of berry bits in my room at the moment until I figure out what to do 😅
48 notes · View notes
goodthingstoknoww · 1 year
Text
188 notes · View notes
clarasunflowers · 1 year
Text
radfems against food waste! 🥬
here’s some good info compiled from kathryn kellogg on how to make use of food waste - remember to compost the rest! (click link for more from her including zero waste recipes!)
1. make your own apple cider vinegar
save all apple peels and cores in a mason jar. add 2 tbsp sugar, fill with water. let sit 3 weeks in the dark. strain water into new jar. let sit 3 more weeks in the dark. done!
2. how to eat broccoli stalks
trim off the bottom and shave the rough sides. slice long-ways into thin pieces. toss in with the “tops” and prepare how you like.
3. banana bread recipes using overripe bananas
4. revive wilted kale
cut off the stalks, then soak the leaves in ice water 30 mins. store them upright (like a flower bouquet!) in a jar with water in the fridge.
5. preserve lemon peels
boil 4-5 lemon rinds/peels for 30 mins. add rinds to jar, pour in ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ kosher salt. mix. store in the fridge!
6. get the most out of your squeezed fruit juice
simply microwave your lemons and limes 15-20 seconds and squeeze out a whole lot more!!
7. preserve wilted herbs
chop up wilted herbs and fill up and ice tray. add in water or oil or butter or lemon juice. freeze!
8. make stock from your veggie scraps
this is NOT for cruciferous vegetables! save veggie scraps in the freezer until the bowl is full. simmer 1 hour on the stove OR 6 hours in the crock pot. add herbs to your liking.
9. use carrot “tops” in place of parsley
honorable mentions
save and reuse other organic components!
1. maintain your flower petals
air dry or oven dry your flower petals (85°C/200°F for 20 mins). add in dehydrated orange peels and cranberries, rosemary, cinnamon sticks, and/or anything else you like. put in a covered bowl overnight. add to small fabric bag and let sit in your drawers/closet for that lovely potpourri scent!
2. upcycle your christmas trees
trim small parts of your pine, spruce, or balsam fir christmas tree branches. add to a jar with 1x1 mix of vinegar and water. shake shake shake! strain and use as a cleaner spray!
179 notes · View notes
a-meh · 12 days
Text
Tumblr media
48 notes · View notes
Quote
In the US, around 6,000 calories of food are produced per person per day; 30–40 percent of it is lost, including in the many stages of capitalist production and transport, and around 10 percent goes to animal feed. This leaves around 3,700 calories per person. Humans need far less than that, although perhaps a more active and nature-engaged population would be a hungrier one, too. On a global basis, total calories available per person are closer to 3,100, with less food waste, especially in the Third World, including China and Greece. Food waste is intimately related to the syndrome of production that links industrial monocrops to urban and slum consumers. Elongated production chains are blighted with weak links and rust. They only make sense from the perspective of the monopolies that forge them and use them to strangle the planet and its poor. In rural areas, food waste is far lower.
Max Ajl, A People’s Green New Deal
102 notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 2 months
Text
The new 'compost obligatoire' rules came into force on 1 January 2024. Here's what they entail.
As of 1 January 2024, organic waste recycling is mandatory in France under new 'compost obligatoire' rules.
With support from the government’s Green Fund, municipalities must provide residents with ways to sort bio-waste, which includes food scraps, vegetable peels, expired food and garden waste.
Households and businesses are required to dispose of organic matter either in a dedicated small bin for home collection or at a municipal collection point. Previously, only those who generated over five tonnes of organic waste per year were required to separate it.
The waste will then be turned into biogas or compost to replace chemical fertilisers. Alternatively, it can be composted at home.
The obligation is currently on local authorities to provide an easy means for households to compost or separate organic waste.
While facilities are rolled out, there will not be fines imposed for non-compliance. It is yet to be seen whether stricter rules will be imposed in future. 
One-third of household waste is bio-waste
Organic waste from food and gardens accounts for almost one-third of household waste. When it is mixed with other rubbish, it typically ends up in landfills or incinerators, where it produces heat-trapping greenhouse gases like methane and CO2.
Food waste is responsible for about 16 per cent of the total emissions from the EU food system, according to the European Commission. Globally, food loss and waste generates around 8 per cent of all human-caused emissions annually, the UN says.
It can also contaminate packaging destined for recycling like paper, plastic and glass.
In 2018, only 34 per cent of the EU’s total bio-waste was collected, leaving 40 million tonnes of potential soil nutrients to be discarded, according to NGO Zero Waste Europe.
In France, an estimated 82 kg of compostable waste per person is thrown away each year.
Is bio-waste separation mandatory in other European countries?
Under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, bio-waste collection is being encouraged this year, but it stops short of setting mandatory targets.
In many European countries, organic waste separation has already been implemented at the municipal level.
Milan in Italy has been running a residential food waste collection programme since 2014. Households were given dedicated bins and compostable bags to kick off the scheme.
Elsewhere, taxes or bans on incinerating bio-waste have encouraged similar schemes, with separate bins and home composting widespread in Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium.
The UK announced plans to roll out separate food waste collection in 2023. It remains voluntary for households in England, but is more strictly enforced in Wales and for business owners.
How to sort your bio-waste
Ideally, all waste - including organic matter - should be kept to a minimum.
This can be achieved through careful meal planning. Consuming, freezing or preserving food before it expires along with using every part of an ingredient also help to reduce waste. Some food waste can even be repurposed into animal feed.
Any food waste that cannot be saved or repurposed should be either composted or separated for collection. This includes uneaten food scraps, baked goods, dairy products, eggshells, fruit and vegetables and their peels, mouldy food, pet food, raw and cooked meat and fish, bones, tea and coffee grounds.
Liquids, non-food products and packaging should not be placed in bio-waste bins.
-via EuroNews.Green, January 2, 2024
174 notes · View notes
thoughtportal · 1 year
Video
snacks from food scraps
180 notes · View notes