The problem of food waste, revisited

I hate throwing food away, but for lots of different reasons, I have to. Throwing processed food away is basically throwing away energy. I have documented here before that some municipalities in Britain are implementing ways to receive and re-use food waste, either voluntarily or mandatorily. I expect that this will happen domestically over the course of time, and I wish it would happen sooner rather than later. (Progressive San Francisco already requires it.)

But what we toss into the garbage bag or down the disposal is but the tip of the food waste iceberg. The article linked below discusses the staggering global level of 0f food waste, and there is a lot wasted on the supply end as well as the consumption end. As the article notes, this profligacy is bad on a lot of levels, both for the costs of food for those who need low-cost food, and for the energy required to transport, produce, store, and market foods in affluent consumer countries like the U.S. of A.

Reducing food waste: making the most of our abundance

"Meanwhile, industrialized countries waste some 222 million tons of perfectly good food annually, a quantity nearly equivalent to the 230 million tons that sub-Saharan Africa produces in a year."

So I wish that my overripe bananas could be turned into biofuel. ASAP.