White House Announces Strategy to Keep Edible Food Out of Landfills
The government will look at ways to extend the shelf life of foods and to create more composting and other facilities, as well as urge companies to donate more food.
I guess I may be naive, but I assumed compost collection would have become standard with garbage and recycling.
A few communities have that. Most of the US doesn't. Large parts don't even have metal recycling.
Compost with weekly pick up while garbage is picked up every 2 weeks seems to be effective in my area. Since food waste smells quickly in the regular garbage most people use the compost to get it gone faster.
Others will complain about how stupid the city is wasting thier tax dollars and failing to collect their piling up stinky garbage all while refusing to recycle or compost any of their garbage.
You should check out the EPA's site on food waste (scroll down to the tables!)
It's really cool.
They also have breakdowns for metal, glass, wood, yard clippings, and other recycleables from years 1960-2018. Eye-opening numbers
In my city it is, and it provides natural gas for the city buses
What’s in the White House plan?
The White House says it will fund research into technologies that could extend the shelf life of food, like new seed varieties and better packaging.
The government will also invest in research to measure the “effectiveness of different consumer messages to encourage households to reduce food waste” and help students learn food waste prevention tips, including in school cafeterias, which can be enormous sources of food waste.
The Department of Agriculture says it’s also working with farmers, crop insurance agents and others to reduce on-farm food loss.
Yay. They found a way without impacting shareholder profits.
Keep edible food out of landfills by increasing shelf life? Presumably if the food is edible by the the time its getting to the landfill then shelf life isn't the problem.
If the food has longer shelf life, stores can keep the same amount of stock as now and sell everything before it goes bad.
Of course, the easy way would be for stores to not stock as much of food that is likely to go bad before all of it is sold, but then they make less money and also customers would cry that they sometimes can't get everything they want.
