Lots of good ideas out there. Some local students came up with this one.
PDF Link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he idea is brilliant in its simplicity.
Place the more than 50 tons of food waste generated annually by UW-Stout into 55 gallon plastic
drums that roll down a 300-foot concrete trench over a 40-day period, and when the barrels reach
the end, the food waste will be turned into an organic soil.
In fact, the idea generated by three students in Noah Norton’s industrial design class at UW-Stout
is so good that it is among the top 10 of more than 100 projects submitted to the first-ever
mtvU/GE Ecomagination Challenge.
The students, Jason Burbank, Tobias Leidke and Tim Parmer, say they knew the idea was good,
but that they are surprised and pleased to find their project in the top 10 alongside projects from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Southern California and
Vanderbilt University.
PeakOil is You
25% of all groceries go to waste
Re: 25% of all groceries go to waste
by wisconsin_cur » Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:44:36
http://www.thenewfederalistpapers.com
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Re: 25% of all groceries go to waste
by Quinny » Thu 16 Apr 2009, 14:10:35
Where does it say between field and store shelf. I thought it was of all that reached the store shelf.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '8')) Any production process has its failure rate. Its reject pieces and seconds. Agriculture, dealing with living things subject to attack from insects microbes floods and droughts, isn't it a wonder they get any good production at all. I would say that a 25% loss between field and store shelf is probably a historical low and without oil you would be hard pressed to match much less improve on it.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '8')) Any production process has its failure rate. Its reject pieces and seconds. Agriculture, dealing with living things subject to attack from insects microbes floods and droughts, isn't it a wonder they get any good production at all. I would say that a 25% loss between field and store shelf is probably a historical low and without oil you would be hard pressed to match much less improve on it.
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Re: 25% of all groceries go to waste
by Caffeine » Thu 16 Apr 2009, 14:26:10
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'L')ots of good ideas out there. Some local students came up with this one.
Nice article. It makes me wonder where colleges/universities get their food from (especially perishable food) and how far it has to be shipped to get there. Imagine some vegetable being shipped 3,000 miles to a university cafeteria, being wasted, then added to a landfill. (It's better that that vegetable becomes compost, of course.) Maybe that 3,000 miles could become 300 or 600 miles?
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Re: 25% of all groceries go to waste
by LNC » Sun 19 Apr 2009, 00:14:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'T')his is why I think a die off, while perhaps inevitable, is not likely to happen for a while.
Good finding, Mos.Indeed, waste is America's real #1 pass-time. It sure shows we have tons of fat to cut before we really start hurting. A few years ago, the measurement of daily trash per American was 4 pounds. Then it jumped to ~4.8. Now I see people already rounding it 5 pounds per person per day. That doesn't include recyclables.
The die-off, IMHO, will come from more upstream. We won't be able to produce and/or import sufficient quantities to feed 300M, much less to waste.
I think an OMFG-die-off in North America is rather unlikely, nuclear war or pandemic aside. Those are real threats. The spectacular waste in North American society is what turned me from the path of doom to the path of optimism. So much food is wasted (In the form of meat production), and so much liquid fuels are wasted in personal transportation, that keeping vital infrastructure running even with serious supply shortfalls does not seem too far removed from reality to me.
The only real wild cards are geopolitical and pandemic related. If the dollar crashes, then America is in trouble, because even if enough oil might be available to keep things going, the US of A won't be able to buy it. Needless to say, nuclear war is on the table so long as the means exist for it to happen.
If we were in our present situation, and did not waste a ton of food on meat production and a ton of fuel on personal transportation, then I would be in the hills with MREs and guns somewhere. But the reality is there is plenty of demand to destroy. The options are not McLife or the stone age. Hell, I heard on the radio the other day that a local businessman figured out a profitable way to ship live lobster from Nova Scotia to L.A. by truck. In climate-controlled seawater-misted lobster life support trucks. There's some future oil demand that conventional economic theory predicts that won't be around for long.
On the subject of conventional economic theory, the only reason why perpetual growth is necessary is because the banks say it is so. In a future where perpetual growth is not a reality, does anyone really think that we need to worry about finding new Ghawars every X years when the mechanism that produces McMansions and SUVs and 50" televisions for everyone has failed (It already has)?
The fact is, if the doomers are right, the only viable strategy is to head for the hills with some guns and a bunch of MREs. If nuclear war or really bad climate change doesn't happen, of course. Is that kind of existence even a worthy goal?
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