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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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When you don't clean your plate, microbes feast. And Americans are awfully good at feeding microbes, wasting some 222 million metric tons of food a year. That's a quarter of our food.
Much of that wasted food ends up in garbage dumps, turned by microbes into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and one of the primary culprits behind global warming.
Now government officials in Massachusetts would like to ensure that restaurants, universities, hospitals and other large institutions don't exacerbate that problem. The idea is to make sure all that wasted food doesn't end up in landfills but instead becomes either compost or energy.
The same microbes that turn food into methane in a landfill can turn food into methane in a biodigester and that methane can then be used as a fuel. More importantly, from the Bay State’s perspective, it will keep the state's landfills from filling up.
Of course, the methane from landfills can also be harvested, and often is. And, as the Pilgrims knew, it would be even smarter not to waste the food in the first place. But let's give thanks for another helping of new ways to curb climate change.
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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4 Comments
Add CommentI was born during WWII and I can remember the shortage and rationing of food, there was very little waste, the kitchen waste, peelings etc. was fed to chickens or rabbits for eggs and meat, 65 yrs on and we still buy only what we need, cook only what we need, kitchen waste is composted, 0% for the trash-can, 0% for landfill, therefore no methane...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWaste is totally disgusting and avoidable, get your act together, you bunch of wasters...
The problem is distribution more than anything else. That and the ridiculous need for the Western world to demand visibly perfect appearance in food. Toss in a general lack of time to be creative with foods due to the majority of the population needing to work half their year paying off the government taxes and regulation and you end up with wasted food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is with SA not toeing the line with the warmist religion. Methane is a major contributor to global warming? What? According to the warmist dogma only CO2 is the problem and only when it is caused by human industry.
Perhaps the problem is more directly the growth and redistribution of population. During WWII the population of the U.S. was <150 million living mostly in rural areas, now it's ~314 million living mostly in urban areas. Most chickens now live in huge factories, btw.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDistribution of waste processing, along with chickens, wasn't much of a problem during WWII...
I’m surprised that a reader of Sci. Am. doesn’t know that methane is possibly the most powerful of the green house gasses. CO2 is the gas we humans produce the most of, so much of it that it is presently the most important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI say presently because as the climate warms we are beginning to see more and more methane being released from the Arctic regions. This is come from the melting permafrost and hydrates on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. This release of methane due to warming will only escalate with time, feeding into the positive feedback of the warming cycle.
It seems that as with most deniers you haven’t taken the time to become informed and only comment with “Foxisims.” The uninformed public is quite possibly the worst problem in the US concerning warming. Remember it’s called science for a reason.