Meatloaf Beatloaf- Food Waste in the US

"Every family has a kid that won't eat", in this scene of A Christmas Story that kid is Ralphie's younger brother Randy. He is told to not play with his food and instead eat it. "Starving people would be happy to have that" says their mother- the favorite line of parents trying to get their kids to eat food when they refuse it. After The Great Depression, subsidies were placed on certain kinds of produce in order to make sure the country was fed and that farmers were secure enough to keep growing crops and maintain a stable food market. This movie takes place in the 1940's when food waste was substantially lower than it is now in 2018. Especially since this was before food processing was taking over the United States' markets following World War II. This scene also displays the typical family dinner in the 1940's where they are eating the same food or similar food as they usually do and it is made by the woman of the house without processing.

 Back in my day (haha), my parents would force my siblings and I to sit at the table until we were done eating, and if we refused we had to go straight to bed (as this exact scene was quoted to us). My younger sister Amanda was a particularly picky eater, and came to this consequence several times a week when she was younger. According to the movie we just finished watching, Wasted, a head of lettuce takes 25 years to decompose in a landfill. Can you imagine how long it has taken for the thousands of pounds of food thrown out throughout each of our childhoods has taken to decompose? It may only just be decomposing as we speak. But unlike the scene from A Christmas Story, the food that is being wasted is most likely mass produced such as the frozen bag of peas, carrots, and corn that made its way onto our childhood plates almost every night. Those vegetables have most likely not even started to decompose in the landfill.

This is a frightening thought when you then take in all of the components involved with food waste in the United States. Congresswoman Pingree has found, 40% of food in the United States is wasted, which is around 133 billion pounds. It costs people, restaurants, and businesses $161 billion dollars, which is averaged to about $1,500 of wasted food per household a year. And this total of food a year amounts to 20% of landfill weight, which emits methane a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. As stated by Michael Pellman Rowland in Forbes, "What makes this so maddening is that we’re not just wasting food that could end global hunger, but we’re burning up the planet's resources in the process. In the United States, food production uses 50% of our land, 30% of all energy resources, and swallows 80% of all freshwater (USDA, 2016). I was stunned to discover that food waste is the single largest component going into municipal landfills, where it emits methane, helping to make landfills the third largest source of methane in the US. (EPA)". Even just giving 15% of this food waste to food banks and food insecurity organizations could cut the number of hungry Americans in half. Organic food waste can be used to fertilize soil or be processed into renewable energy. Waste-to-energy (WTE) systems are a relatively new source of green energy. According to Scientific American, "currently there are some 800 industrial-scale WTE plants in more than three dozen countries around the world, and likely thousands of smaller systems at individual sites. Most employ anaerobic digesters, which make use of microorganisms to break down and convert organic waste into a fuel such as biogas, biodiesel or ethanol." It was found that in the EPA study cited by both Scientific American and Forbes, that the yield from anaerobic digestion (the processing of food waste turned into energy) had the ability to create more methane gas, was more environmentally friendly/ biodegradable, and had the potential to give more energy than the energy sources in the status quo as well maintained a stable supply comparable to the energy security provided now (provided cities are supplied with the technology).

So if this is proving to be a new and green way of substantially lowering the United States' carbon footprint by utilizing the food waste created, why has it not been implemented?

It is economically, environmentally, and fiscally smart to go green in this way for the food industry. So it only makes sense that the politics of the oil industry would get in the way. Big oil companies have invested millions of dollars against the green initiative in the United States. Big oil companies must begin to recognize that there must be a shift in the market for energy in the United States, but the market itself is flawed. Which is also why E. Donald Elliot of Yale Law School, believes that green energy policies have not been passed in the US. Elliot claims that the free market, the structure of our government, and the American ideology surrounding energy. He claims that the United States is so vastly different from state to state, that every area requires a different level of energy and a different way for that energy to be obtained based on the environment- which is why a widespread federal mandate cannot happen. As well as the funding for a widespread mandate on green energy would cost billions. Secondly, Americans value the free market very highly therefore if people wanted to care about the environment and spend their money/ tax dollars on green energy then they would, and they would then make the big oil companies obsolete or forced into the green industry. Lastly, Elliot believes that the countries that value green initiatives tend to mention and favor the fight against global climate change more than they value energy security. The United States tends to favor energy security more than it does the fight against global climate change. The research seems to conclude Americans favor their own self interests over the greater good or the threat of inconvenience (who's really surprised?).

And yet, it is projected by CNN that the big oil companies will have to spend $350 billion on renewable energy sources by 2035 in order to keep their influential/ wealthy standing in the market. "But renewable energy costs have begun to come down, a trend that many expect will accelerate thanks to the billions of dollars being poured into new technologies. Solar costs alone have been roughly halved over the past five years. The growth is backed up by impressive job creation, with solar employment expanding last year 17 times faster than the total U.S. economy." With the influx of money going into the green tech industry, it seems that now more than ever the next generations are caring more about the environment and looking for a political upheaval that may in turn demand an environmentally friendly market.

So it seems that the data would point to the fact that big oil has run the energy sector in the United States for so long that a change to the system seems unsure and terrifying. But if the studies listed do not put people's minds to ease then little will. It would take years to implement something as drastic as this, and would be even harder to jump through the legal hoops for it to happen, but the ability to truly "kill two birds with one stone" in this instance seems too damning to deny. If even "ugly" foods were sold at supermarkets, all organic food waste was to be redirected into the energy sector, and food waste was made into energy, the United States would have the potential to decrease it's carbon footprint by the millions. And as Rowland says in Forbes, "If even a quarter of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people (FAO)."

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