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Page added on December 15, 2016
Limiting Waste, Conserving Resources
oday, 7.3 billion people consume 1.5 times what the Earth’s natural resources can supply. By 2050, the world’s population will exceed 9 billion, and the demand for food will double. Feeding this growing population will create a tremendous burden on a stressed food production system.
We are already seeing this trend in action, as a growing global middle class is increasing the demand for food. No place is this more evident than China, where a burgeoning middle class is consuming more food, especially meat.
PwC reports that in 2011, the average Chinese person consumed more calories per day than the average Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese and even Japanese person and is quickly nearing South Korean, British and American levels. China is, in many ways, a harbinger of things to come. In the next two decades, the country will consume nearly a quarter of all chicken produced in the world. It already has the second largest poultry industry in the world, producing nearly 13 million metric tons in 2013.
Eating so much chicken takes its toll on the environment. It involves a lot of natural resources, including feed, water and energy, and also generates significant amounts of waste and greenhouse gases. To produce one chicken, it takes 10 days’ worth of drinking water, more than eight pounds of feed, and enough energy to power a television for 18 hours.
Since imports feed much of China, the nation’s consumption affects some of the world’s most endangered regions, including the Amazon, Central Africa and Central Asia, which are threatened by agricultural expansion.
Soy production, in particular, has significant environmental impacts. The soy fed to Chinese poultry is grown in the United States, Brazil and other parts of South America, where it’s linked to deforestation of the Amazon as well as the loss of grasslands and woodlands such as the Cerrado and Chaco regions. Feed crop expansion is also encroaching on the Northern Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada, which are home to bison, foxes and ferrets, not to mention thousands of ranchers.
It is essential for all the actors across the value chain – from farmers, factory owners, retailers and consumers – to understand that they have a role to play in conserving our natural resources. Limiting food waste is a critical step that the food industry and consumers alike can take to reduce the use of natural resources needed to produce food. Despite resource-intensive production, about 20 percent of meat is never consumed. It is lost or wasted within the supply chain or in restaurants and home kitchens.
One way to reduce the loss and waste of meat is to prolong its shelf life. This means improving supply chains that keep meat cold during storage and distribution. It also entails improving packaging at retail. Today in China, most chicken is sold in so-called wet markets where it is not packaged and, as a result, can spoil faster.
By reducing waste, we can increase food security and conserve natural resources, and alleviate the pressure on the global food production system both within China and the fragile ecosystems where feed is sourced. As the world’s most populous country with a rapidly expanding middle class, China has the potential to show the rest of the world how to create a more sustainable food future. The lessons we learn from China can eventually be implemented globally so that our global food system can be ready to handle the growing population before us.
17 Comments on "Limiting Waste, Conserving Resources"
rockman on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 9:03 am
Nothing wrong with pushing for eliminating waste. But reading such an illogical statement as “…7.3 billion people consume 1.5 times what the Earth’s natural resources can supply.” kills much incentive to read what follows. Rather difficult to consume more then you’re supplied. Of course we can imagine the point about sustainability they’re trying to make. But so often arguments from all sides of a situation will use hyperbolic language just for the emotional knee jerk reaction. But for many readers it minimizes any valid points being made.
makati1 on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 9:11 am
The U$ wastes 1/4 of the world’s resources. It wastes enough food annually to feed 100 million people. Waste is America.
penury on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 10:01 am
I would not argue about how much waste the U.S. creates but waste is everywhere. Look at the plastic islands in the Pacific, Waste is required by law or regulation in the U.S. for most consumer products. The cost to the consumer is high but the cost to the planet is worse. I have never seen a movement to reduce the excess packaging so I presume most people approve.
onlooker on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 10:18 am
True Mak it goes hand in hand with the tremendous share of resources the US has always consumed especially after WWII relative to the world and also a cavalier attitude about the need for not contaminating so much. Corporations being irresponsible and greedy has not helped. Of course what can you expect from the country that epitomizes the zenith of Human Consumption and Waste.
Davy on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 10:49 am
Asia is where the most waste and environmental destruction is in aggregate. Only the blind would not see that.
onlooker on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 11:37 am
Yes in the aggregate the environmental destruction is unparalleled in Asia. And the waste and destruction per capita has risen as consumerism has increased
dave thompson on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 12:49 pm
I can no longer read the tripe this kind of article offers.
Aspera on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 1:54 pm
Rock: I don’t see the problem – unless all we think about is non-renewables. We can “…consume 1.5 times what the Earth’s natural resources can supply” when talking about renewables. Just consume above the rate of replacement. That’s the very basis of Catton’s book “Overshoot” and our oft-repeated snarky comment about humans being as stupid as yeast. (We should at least be consistent with our critiques…)
(Not arguing for the rest of the article, but I have no problem with that first line.)
Sissyfuss on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 1:56 pm
C’mon DaveT, tripe is very tasty and we shouldn’t waste it either.
Anonymous on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 3:11 pm
I can see why rocky has hard time with the math. He cant wrap his head around the idea of consuming the earths directly capital(land and biosystems) vs ‘interest'(the resulting ‘products’). If you phrased the argument solely in terms of dead presidents on uS toilet paper ($$), I am certain rocky be able to understand it much better.
rockman on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 4:08 pm
A&A – OK, boys. Since you’re both so clever explain to everyone how the world can consume 150 widgets when there’s only a supply of 100 widget. Last person that produced more loaves and fishes then he had in his basket eventually got crucified. Hopefully y’all won’t suffer the same fate. LOL.
Aspera on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 6:08 pm
Rock, I can only imagine you’re kidding. Granted that if you limit your thinking to consumer widgets or non-renewable petroleum (you’re area I take it; and the source of peak oil DYNAMICS) then, of course, consumption must equal supply at any instant in time. A trivial problem-set in Econ 101.
Consider renewables, their replenishment rates and longer than an instant in time… well, welcome to the planet where things get more interesting than in Econ 101. And where those DYNAMICS you clued us into are a bit more involved that a widget’s supply-demand curve.
Having followed your posts for years now I can’t believe you’re not just having your fun with us here. If I’m wrong, then geez, you’d benefit from reading Catton’s
“Overshoot” or any number of other treatments of this issue.
(Does anyone here actually believe that the planet functions as an Econ 101 supply-demand curve would suggest?)
Anonymous on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 6:59 pm
Yes, Aspera, rocky really does believe the world, maybe the universe even, operates exactly the way you described. For, him, everything can be reduced to purely ‘economic’ terms. Strictly dollar driven. For him, people, both individually, and collectively, only place value on the physical world insofar as how many dollars they can extract by exploiting it.
Aspera on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 8:17 pm
Anon: I guess someone could believe that classic “economic man” is the full and only definition of human nature and yet still understand that non-renewable resources can be consumed above their replacement rates.
It’s only taken three Nobel winners to show the error of the former assumption. But the latter would probably only require grade school math.
Aspera on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 8:18 pm
Sorry, that should have been, “… RENEWABLE resources can be consumed above their replacement rates.”
Davy on Fri, 16th Dec 2016 5:21 am
Sorry, “RENEWABLE resources can be consumed above their replacement rates” is wrong. This statement is not valid in regards to our current world in scale. This statement is not valid in relation to modernist techno optimist version of alternative energy applied to our modern industrial economy. Modern alternative energy is dirty and requires destructive processes to realize its full potential. It does not self-replicate. It is applied to a way of life that is destructive. It will only add more people to a world already in overshoot as it succeeds no different than the green revolution did. It will not change man’s lack of wisdom to choose properly. It has only been proven to be viable as a small associated energy segment in combination with a fossil fuel world. More can and should be done but a false narrative should not be a goal. This is wrong in regards to reality. The referenced statement properly applies to a pastoral pre-modern arrangement or better yet, a semi-nomadic hunter gather culture. This is proper because these people harvested solar energy correctly. The reality is they still were destructive to the natural ecosystem. Man has always disturbed ecosystems. That is our nature.
I am a naturalist. I believe in the importance of alternative energy. I live it and I embrace this living. What I won’t do is fall for the fake narrative of a system that has a foundation of goodness and a future of balance and harmony when that is not the case. Alternative energy techno optimism is a lie. It is a lie because it is a denial of reality and projection of a “what if” that is not grounded in the truth. That said it serve a purpose in the bigger picture even though these folks are in denial of reality and blinded by techno optimism of alternative energy. This purpose is to motivate our society to produce as much alternative hardware as possible before industrial civilization fails. This hardware will serve us well in the countdown to collapse. This goal is less pain and suffering from the death of our civilization.
Where this green message changes people attitudes for the better this is worthy too even though it is based on denial and in a delusional techno trance. Nothing is worse than the deplorables of the status quo who embrace the most destructive force ever unleashed on the “Ecos” and that is market based capitalism supported by liberal democracy. Yes, free speech and choice will destroy the world because man is not capably of the wisdom of choice. I will not live a lie even though it sounds wonderful. It is what it is and that is just another false narrative modern man embraces in his flight from the reality of his mortality. A flight from reality of death and an embrace of a disaster that is us.
Aspera on Fri, 16th Dec 2016 11:56 am
Easy up Davy. Take a walk in a pastoral forest… No claim that one can SUSTAINABLY consume renewables above their replacement rate. And, your use of the term “overshoot” proves you get the concept that we can consume above replacement rates.
You seem to be arguing several orthogonal notions. Modern, high-tech, “renewables” might deserve another name that highlights that they involve non-renewables and/or fossil-fuels for their existence. The massive wind turbine farm down the road from my has enough iron in it to mess with a compass and I can’t imagine its electronics being made from 100% renewables. At best, they would allow for a transition to a very low energy flux civilization (if only we were on that path). You also seem to be arguing about human nature (my area of research as it happens), with great pessimism (that I’m sure many here will want me to reword that as realism). I infer that you imagine humans can only burn out planets and thus there is no chance we could live within biophysical limits.
Now please don’t get me wrong here. I honestly don’t mean any disrespect whatsoever in my question. But given what you’ve just written, why do you bother to follow this site and post?