Organic Waste Facts

According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 33% of all the food cultivated for the people of this planet never gets eaten.  That’s roughly 1.3 billion tons of wasted food.

Instead of being recycled into clean energy and organic fertilizer, this food is lost, wasted, incinerated, or left to rot.

When you factor in the billions of tons cultivated for livestock, it is estimated that nearly 50% of the world’s food supply goes to waste.

 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans generated roughly 34 million tons of food waste in 2010, accounting for 14% of all municipal solid waste.  Only 3% of this waste was separated, recovered, and recycled.  The remainder (33 million tons) was left to rot in landfills or sent to incinerators.

 

Of the 34 million tons of food waste generated in 2010, less than 3% was put to use.  The remaining 33 million tons sat in landfills or went to incinerators.  Both of these disposal methods release harmful toxins into the atmosphere.

In 2006, American households discarded roughly 14% of the consumable products they purchased.  In economic terms, that’s $600 in wasted money per household or $43 billion for the entire country.

 

We tend to think of landfills as the final resting places of plastics, discarded electronics, and old clothes.  The largest bulk of all trash that reaches landfills and incinerators, however, is food that could have been eaten or recycled into organic fertilizer and green energy.

When you factor in yard clippings, paper, and wood waste (all of which can be recycled into fertilizer and green energy), total organic waste accounts for 2/3 of the solid waste stream.

 

According to food activist and author, Tristram Stuart, the food wasted annually by American households, retailers, and food services is enough to feed every one of the 1 billion malnourished people in the world.

 

Food waste materials left to rot in municipal landfills release toxic levels of methane – a harmful greenhouse gas with 20-25 times more global warming potential than CO2.

In addition, the landfills used to store food waste account for more than 20% of all methane emissions.

 

The average consumer in North America and Europe wastes between 209-253 pounds of food every year.

To put this in perspective, the average American citizen eats just under 5 pounds of food on a daily basis (according to the USDA).  This means that the food each one of us wastes in one year would be enough to feed us for nearly 2 months.

Globally, the irrigation water used to cultivate wasted food (i.e. food that never gets eaten) is enough to meet the domestic needs of everyone on Earth.  In fact, at 200 liters per person per day, this water is enough for 9 billion people.

This figure doesn’t necessarily include water used on livestock, much of which also goes to waste.

 

Not only do we import many of the fruits and vegetables we eat, but we also import the petrochemicals and fertilizers used to grow our domestic crops.

We spend more than $5 billion annually on petro-fertilizers derived from toxic fossil fuels.  These synthetic fertilizers leak dangerous chemicals into the soil, accelerating the release of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than CO2.

When you consider all of the organic recycling potential locked up in food waste, it seems silly to rely on fossil fuel alternatives when we could create organic fertilizers directly from this waste.

It seems even stranger that we would import 80% of our fertilizers from abroad.  We already have domestic resources that literally “go to waste.”

 

According to Time Magazine, conventional fertilizers release nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with more than 300 times the harmful warming power of CO2.

 

Pollutants from petro-fertilizers are not limited to the atmosphere.  They also leak into aquifers, rivers, and oceans.  In certain cases, these fertilizers lead to hypoxia or “dead zones” in the oceans where nothing can survive.

When you add up all 400 of the known dead zones around the globe, you get an area nearly the size of Wyoming.

According to the National Restaurant Association, 65% of all eating establishments in America have recycling programs.  Owners are quickly realizing the environmental and economic benefits of responsible organic waste management.

 

Restaurant owners are not the only ones who understand the benefits of recycling.  A growing number of patrons prefer supporting restaurants that responsibly manage their organic waste.

 

In a 2011 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 51% of respondents indicated a willingness to pay “a little more” at eating establishments with recycling programs in place.