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How To Have Zero Waste in Your Kitchen
How To Have Zero Waste in Your Kitchen
Unfortunately, many of us generate a lot of waste – which damages our bank accounts and the planet. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Just how much waste does America generate?
According to a 2013 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, it is an astonishing amount:
In 2013, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash and recycled and composted about 87 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.3 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.40 pounds per person per day.
Municipal solid waste (more commonly known as trash or garbage) consists of everyday items we use and then throw away, including product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This waste comes from our homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
This is a shame because most of the trash we throw away can be reused, repurposed, or recycled for another use.
Food waste, in particular, is a huge problem and is unnecessary and especially tragic.
According to a study funded by the United States Department of Agriculture and published earlier this year, American consumers waste about one pound of food per day or 225-290 pounds per year. This means US households throw out about 150,000 tons of food each day, total.
Put this into perspective: this means that about 20% of all the food put on our plates is tossed out every year – enough to feed 2 billion extra people annually. It is equivalent to about a third of the calories the average American consumes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Wormeries
Wormeries
Several years ago a study commissioned by the United Nations found that, at a time when the world has more hungry people than ever before, one-third of all food is wasted. Consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food, 222 million tonnes, as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. A previous study had found that British households threw away an estimated one metric tonne of food per year.
Of course, everyone will have some kitchen waste – no one wants to eat the potato peelings or woody stems – but Nature recycles everything. Dropped in the woods those peelings quickly become food for birds or rodents, which fertilise the ground. If these animals are not around, they become food for insects, which in turn feed the larger animals. Whatever insects don’t eat becomes food for moulds and other fungi, and what they don’t eat goes to aerobic bacteria.
In our modern society, though, we have managed to take Nature’s cycles and slice them into several crises. We use vast amounts of fertilisers, pesticides and water to grow food, ship it around the world, often throw it away uneaten — and when we throw it away, we often put in in plastic bags.
This bizarre habit has the effect of sealing the food away from the animals — furry, feathered or creeping – that would eat it, and cutting off the oxygen that would allow fungi and aerobic bacteria to breathe. That leaves only anaerobic bacteria, Nature’s emergency backup workers, who work slowly and create a bit of an odour. You might think that decomposition smells foul anyway, but a well-turned compost actually doesn’t generate much of a smell.
Moreover, anaerobic bacteria create large quantities of methane, which is a serious greenhouse gas — about 35 times worse than carbon dioxide, and accounts for about 20 per cent of the greenhouse effect.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
