Talk:Zero Waste
The interest in stripping back and living as minimally as possible can be seen to be more synonymous with Zero Waste. However, Freeganism also concerns itself with how society's most abundant, most energy intensive products are poorly managed. In this way, Freeganism and Zero Waste have a similar consumer activist mindset that can mean taking steps to lead the way in changing consumer practices.
Contents
Critique
brimstoneSalad has written somewhere that he promotes utility efficiency rather than zero waste or minimalism, drawing an example to bidets.
Zero Waste is a big philosophy movement while reducing is more analogous to being frugal, we can talk about how most people who subscribe to zero waste philosophy identify as 'moving towards' and in the critique section talk about what it would mean to try and make a better term for reducing waste more popular.
- Zero waste and minimalism aren't the same thing. You can be a minimalist who wastes, or somebody who doesn't waste but isn't a minimalist. Minimalism has more to do with the infrastructure you use to support yourself, or the things you own and use. Owning and using in excess could be considered wasteful, but that's a bit of a stretch because there are valid questions of personal utility. We usually regard throwing a cake in the trash as waste, but not eating it, despite the low nutritional value. Likewise, having a large house but not using the rooms could be regarded as wasting that space, but if you use them as offices, play rooms, storage, etc. even if these uses are not regarded as very productive but rather for entertainment then it would not be regarded as waste. The use vs. waste dichotomy may not be valid 100% of the time, but it does provide a distinction between minimalism and zero waste that at least supports divergence of the concepts.--BrimstoneSaladWiki (talk) 20:10, 18 July 2017 (CEST)
- Interesting, okay so your comments were a criticism of a kind of minimalist use abstinance only, I guess the only over arching theme in all these lifestyles are environmentalist, but anecdotaly I noticed a correlation between zero waste people and minimalism vs. freegan and those promoting post-scarcity abundance. --NonZeroSum (talk) 22:31, 18 July 2017 (CEST)
To draw from
Forum Threads
These were all the thread titles that could find on the subject, will use the site search function for text now:
- the waste debate
- Say no to bottled water
External links
Why wasting food is so bad & simple ways to avoid it (UV video)
Published on Aug 31, 2016
As I and others have said, vegan is not the moral baseline. There’s always more that we can do (or stop doing) to make the world a better place. I've talked about agricultural efficiency a bit in the past, but another major issue in our food supply (and one that we can do a lot about) is waste.
- 0:37 - of waste
- 2:01 - waste is so bad
- 4:05 - waste at home
- 5:12 - to do about inevitable waste
- 6:06 - in retail
References
1. 2014 USDA report http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1282296...
2. Go West, Garbage Can! (Are we running out of room for our garbage?) http://www.slate.com/articles/health_...
3. Greenhouse Gas Emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ...
4. Reducing wasted food at home (EPA) https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-...
5. Composting at home (EPA) https://www.epa.gov/recycle/compostin...
Hey guys. As I and many other vegans have said, vegan is not the moral baseline, there is so much more that we can do or stop doing to make the world a better place, kind of cheesy, but whatever, it's true.
I’ve talked about agricultural efficiency a little bit, I talked about it here with the whole lettuce - bacon thing and the supposed vegans who eat nothing but lettuce and how terrible these supposed vegans are you know for the environment compared to people who eat bacon, it's really stupid.
But there is another major issue in terms of our food supply, something that we actually can do a lot about and that is waste.
I talked about this a little bit in my new year's resolution video from this year about how I wanted to work on reducing waste by you know checking the fridge more often, being careful with fruits and vegetables that I buy, you know fruit that's left out, making sure to cull it you know regularly to make sure that things aren't going bad, to eat them before they do, um I think this hasn't been perfect, the year hasn’t been perfect, things still go sometimes and of course pregnancy and food aversions and whatnot haven't really helped that at all.
But I have made you know little changes, particularly with regard to like things that I buy, purchasing habits to kind of avoid certain foods that spoil easily; it's a serious problem, since almost a third of all food is wasted at the retail and home level:
In the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels in 2010 went uneaten. Retail-level losses represented 10 percent (43 billion pounds) and consumer-level losses 21 percent (90 billion pounds) of the available food supply. (Losses on the farm and between the farm and retailer were not estimated due to data limitations for some of the food groups.)
The numbers are pretty insane right? Again of all the food that is produced, ten percent is wasted at the retail level, twenty one percent at home.
We all know it's bad in environmental terms, with respect to production, obviously anything from an apple to something we typically think of as really environmentally unfriendly like a hamburger requires input, agricultural and energy inputs, right? So if we waste less of these things, we buy less of these things and we produce less of these things and the environment thanks us for it.
And if you eat meat that means that fewer animals are suffering and dying because of what you've bought, obviously buying the meat and consuming it is better than buying the meat and then letting it go to waste and then having to buy more to replace it.
But what about disposal itself? Apparently throwing out food has its own drastic environmental impact, and no I’m not talking about running out of landfills that is a myth, we could keep burying things practically forever, what I’m talking about is transportation, the trash has to make another trip, fuelled by fossil fuels to make it to a landfill.
Food waste accounts for the largest single component of garbage after recycling, twenty-one percent of solid municipal waste according to the EPA. And despite methods at methane venting and burning, landfills still generate substantial amounts of methane:
. . .[I] Additionally, incinerating food waste creates emissions that harm the environment and landfilling food waste generates methane gas when food waste decomposes anaerobically. Methane is 21 times more powerful in accelerating global warming than carbon dioxide (EPA, 2011). Landfills account for 34 percent of all human- related methane emissions in the United States (EPA, 2011). In addition to methane, landfills produce leachate (a mixture of liquid waste, organic degradation byproducts, and rainwater), which may contaminate ground- water if the landfills are not properly maintained. These negative consequences are offset to some extent when energy is generated from incinerating or landfilling food (e.g., tapping the methane gas).
34%, that is even larger than the globally estimated 27% produced by enteric fermentation in animal agriculture - cow farts and burps. So this brings up an interesting question, is eating 30 bananas a day and putting 30 banana pills into a landfill, is that just as bad as eating animal products but avoiding food waste? It's unlikely since there is probably less net CO2 emissions from the banana diet, but the overall environmental impact may not be very far off.
The good news is that the vast majority of food waste is under our control 67% of it occurs at home, at the consumer level, the APA actually has a really useful guide on reducing food waste at home. [4]
The bottom line, according to them is just to try not to do it at all. Putting when food is expected to go bad on your calendar is really helpful, also storing things carefully like laying fruits out on the counter, you know separately, instead of like mashed up in bowls where it's really easy for something to go bad somewhere in the middle or on the bottom and then it can spread really, really quickly.
Avoid buying more food than you can eat right away or relatively soon if it's something that can spoil, this is something that I really struggle with, if there is you know delicious cantaloupe on sale, a crazy sale, I am so tempted to buy like five of them and there's just, I can't eat five kantalopes before they go bad, I know this but uh, it's just very tempting. Also having a leftovers night, you know eat the leftovers once or twice a week, that is really helpful as well.
So what about the inevitable food waste like banana peels for instance, hopefully you aren't fine eating 30 bananas a day, but you may be eating a couple you know bananas a day, so obviously you have a banana peel that is inevitable waste, while the EPA recommends composting, they recommended both for food scraps and yard scraps and they have a helpful guide on how to do that as well. [5]
The basic idea is to keep it covered, so that animals don't get into it, but you also want it to get some air so that it can aerobically decompose, instead of giving off methane, cutting off air to the decomposing food like being buried deep in a landfill; this is what creates the emissions.
You can buy compost bins and tumblers, the one that you just turn to move, you can buy those online, you can even make your own, there are even specially made ones for indoors, if you do not have outdoor space.
Most of the rest of the waste is at the retail level and that may sound like we don't really have much control there, we can't really influence that at all, but actually we have a great amount of control there as well.
So let's start with what we know, what kind of food produces the most waste in general:
The top three food groups in terms of share of total value of food loss were meat, poultry, and fish (30 percent, $48 billion); vegetables (19 percent, $30 billion); and dairy products (17 percent, $27 billion).
So meat is the worst right? Which means that just by going vegetarian, you are already helping a lot in terms of waste reduction and that's not just in terms of production of these things, which we already pretty much know is wasteful in and of itself, it's harmful to the environment, obviously harmful to animals, but also in terms of the supply chain, because these things go bad very quickly in the store.
Next are veggies and dairy which are about the same, in terms of dairy obviously milk spoils and cheese moulds, in terms of veggies pretty obvious as well, I mean all of us I think have to go through sifting through the vegetables in the produce aisle right? The romaine or the broccoli or the fruit whatever it is trying to look for the stuff that isn't mouldy and gross, that's obvious waste at the retail level, so vegetarian very helpful obviously giving up meat, vegan even more so giving up meat and dairy, but you can still do more.
Basing a diet around dried staples, things that do not spoil easily, beans and nuts and whole grains, this is the best thing that we can do to avoid waste as consumers at both at home and at the retail level. You know eating a fruit and greens diet, raw till 4, fully raw, eighty:ten:ten, high raw, whatever you want to call it, it's not only unhealthy for you but certainly less environmentally friendly unless you are growing all of your food yourself and composting everything which I’m willing to bet you're not.
Obviously I'm not suggesting to buy rotten or moldy food, please do not do that, but you know pick things that are slightly bruised or maybe a little bit old or just ugly, things that people are very likely not going to buy, this will keep the store from throwing them out, you may even be able to get a discount on these items, be sure to talk to your produce manager to see.
Some stores like Kroger, they even have a little section where they have the less pretty, little bit older stuff for sale and that's really cool it's a practice that we should really try to reward, the same goes for packaged products as well.
Bread is a really good example, instead of doing what most of us to which is sifting through the bread trying to find the one with the latest sale by date, go for the one with the soonest sale by date, the one that most people are not going to buy.
And now to summarize all of the tips from the last video and this one:
To avoid waste:
1: Focus on staple foods (dry beans, nuts, whole grains, etc.)
So number one, eat mainly efficient, non-perishable staples like dry beans and whole grain products that you can prepare and eat within a couple of days. This virtually eliminates retail waste and waste during long-term storage in your kitchen number.
2: For perishables, plan ahead and store correctly.
Number two, for prepared dishes and perishables like produce, buy or make only what you can eat before it goes bad, store carefully and keep of them eating leftovers and surveying your produce regularly and eating things before they go bad.
3: For perishables, buy reduced for quick sale items.
Number three, when you do shop for produce and other perishables, try to buy the reduced for quick sell stuff and eat or prepare them quickly and remember that thorough cooking it usually sterilizes the food and resets the clock so to speak for spoilage, this can also be useful if you want to keep something longer.
4: Seek out ugly, bruised produce that people are less willing to buy and packaged food closer to its sell-by date.
Number four, if you cannot find quick sell items and are planning to prepare and eat the food soon, try to overcome the compulsion for freshness and buy something a little older, bruised or closer to its sell-by date, rather than as far away as possible. This helps reduce waste in the store, since many other consumers will avoid these products and they might have gone to waste. This is not freeganism obviously, but it is a middle ground and every little bit can help.
