Food waste: Free carrots and no sticks

Food waste. An enormous problem. Approximately one-third of all the food humans produce gets wasted and remains uneaten.

Food waste is a major part of the impact of agriculture on climate change. In order to grow food, we cut down forests, we use fossil fuel to run farm equipment, produce nitrogen fertilizer, and distribute food to consumers. Moreover, when organic waste is not handled properly (through composting), it produces methane, a greenhouse gas, from anaerobic digestion of organic matter in a landfill. Also, non reclaimed phosphorus in food waste leads to further phosphate mining, which is a finite natural resource.

On one hand, humanity wastes a lot of food that we produce. Meanwhile, millions of impoverished people experience hunger and malnutrition. [Read more…]

Do this One Thing for the Climate

Scientists routinely identify some lifestyle habit that contributes to global warming and come up with a better alternative that causes less environmental harm. Then people recommend that others should change their lifestyles and do the better alternative whenever possible. So far so good. And then somebody shows up and says, “Let’s all do this one thing and we will save the planet.” Um, no, that’s not how it works. [Read more…]