An Urban's Rural View

An old quip has it that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. The same could be said about food waste -- or, rather, could have been said before South Korea gave it a try. More on that try in a minute.

For what seems like decades now, the statistic everyone quotes has basically remained unchanged: A third of the food the world's farmers produce is wasted. Oh, sure, sometimes the number is nearer 30%, sometimes 40%. But it's generally within a few percentage points of a third.

If somebody is doing something about it, then, it's not working.

Governments insist they want to bring the number down. In June, for example, the Biden administration put out a "fact sheet" listing what it's done about the problem and what it plans to do. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/…)

Some of these things -- like easing restrictions on giving unused food to food banks or clarifying the meaning of "best by" dates -- seem like good ideas. Whether they'll move the needle much off a third is debatable.

It seems food waste isn't a problem governments are well-equipped to solve. In developing countries, some of what farmers raise never makes it to someone's table. The produce falls victim to poor transportation infrastructure and lack of refrigeration. Fixing these problems costs money developing-country governments don't have.

In rich countries, the causes of waste include large restaurant portions and the unwillingness of many consumers to buy fruits and vegetables that aren't picture-perfect. Governments can raise awareness, but they can't make people eat all the food they buy or give what they don't eat to someone who doesn't have enough.

The harm in wasting food isn't just the waste of money or the missed opportunities to feed the hungry. A less obvious harm is what happens to food waste.

If it's buried in landfills, it releases methane, which is 20 to 30 times worse than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, wasted food is the single most landfilled material in the U.S., constituting 24% of municipal solid waste. (https://www.epa.gov/…)

The alternatives to landfills are composting or recycling. Both are good ideas. Neither is a panacea. South Korea's experience with them, recounted recently in the Washington Post, shows they can remedy one of the harms of food waste but not all of them. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…)

The harm the Koreans have abated is methane. "When South Korea started tackling this problem 20 years ago, it threw away 98% of its food waste," the Post reported. "Today, 98% of food waste is turned into feed, compost or energy, according to the South Korean Ministry of Environment."

To put that in perspective, in the U.S. only 40% of food waste is recycled or composted.

To accomplish the change, South Korea banned food scraps from landfills. Everyone is required to keep their food waste separate from other trash and recycling.

And they pay for the privilege. Some buy compost bags from the government; they deposit filled bags in streetside bins. Others log their waste on a digital card when it's weighed in their apartment buildings. Those caught failing to separate their food waste can be fined.

Much of what's collected is converted into renewable energy. Daejeon, a city of 1.5 million people 85 miles south of Seoul, recycles 400 tons of food waste every day into energy that powers and heats 20,000 households.

Composting is rarer. South Korea's farmers don't like using food-waste compost as animal feed or fertilizer; it smells bad, has high levels of sodium and may contain the occasional toothpick.

All this suggests South Korea is definitely "doing something" about food waste. What it isn't doing, however, is cutting down on the quantity of it. "The amount of food waste being created -- about 5.5 million tons a year -- has not changed much over five years, despite the cost and hassle of residents having to recycle it," the Post reported.

South Korea turned to recycling and composting because it's densely populated -- its nearly 52 million people, roughly equal to the populations of Florida and Texas combined, inhabit an area the size of Indiana. South Koreans were complaining about smelly landfills and they didn't want incinerators nearby.

Experts doubt a country like the U.S. that has much more land and many fewer people per square mile could do what South Korea has done. Densely populated New York City has been trying to encourage composting, but its program recently ran into funding problems.

But if copycat recyclers and composters are no more successful than South Korea in reducing food waste from the one-third level, vast sums of money will continue to go down the drain and many needy people will continue to go hungry.

These are problems somebody needs to do something about.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanize@gmail.com

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