DrumBeat: June 28, 2007
Posted by Leanan on June 28, 2007 - 9:12am
Topic: Miscellaneous
In 1938, Walter Lowdermilk, a senior official in the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, traveled abroad to look at lands that had been cultivated for thousands of years, seeking to learn how these older civilizations had coped with soil erosion. He found that some had managed their land well, maintaining its fertility over long stretches of history, and were thriving. Others had failed to do so and left only remnants of their illustrious pasts.In a section of his report entitled “The Hundred Dead Cities,” he described a site in northern Syria, near Aleppo, where ancient buildings were still standing in stark isolated relief, but they were on bare rock. During the seventh century, the thriving region had been invaded, initially by a Persian army and later by nomads out of the Arabian Desert. In the process, soil and water conservation practices used for centuries were abandoned. Lowdermilk noted, “Here erosion had done its worst....if the soils had remained, even though the cities were destroyed and the populations dispersed, the area might be re-peopled again and the cities rebuilt, but now that the soils are gone, all is gone.”
John Tjepkema: Oil prices may spiral even higher
Warning! In spite of the jump in the price of gas and heating oil over the past few years, prices may go much higher. Demand is increasing, while new supplies are limited and becoming more expensive to produce. After the energy crisis of the ’70s, new oil supplies were developed and we enjoyed 30 years of low-cost energy. This is not likely to happen again, and it is very possible that prices will increase, perhaps even sharply, rather than decrease.
This planet ain't big enough for the 6,500,000,000
Behind the climate crisis lies a global issue that no one wants to tackle: do we need radical plans to reduce the world's population?
Nigeria - Crude oil: Not a renewable resource
Other resources nave been completely abandoned for crude oil which incidentally is today the mainstay of the nation's economy. One is more disturbed by the ugly fact that the technical expertise required for exploration and exploitation of these resources largely depends on foreigners. What is also certain is that this resource will not last forever; it is not perennial, it surely will get dried up someday.
US Energy Secretary: Co Litigation Over Venezuela Projects Likely
ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp. likely will sue after abandoning their Orinoco oil projects under pressure from Venezuela, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday.Bodman also reiterated concerns that Venezuelan crude-oil shipments to the U.S. will be limited following the U.S. companies' pullout.
Chavez: Venezuela, Russia remain strategic partners
"Russia and Venezuela remain strategic partners in the energy sector, and this visit should serve to strengthen this cooperation," Chavez said at the opening ceremony of the Simon Bolivar Cultural Center in Moscow on Thursday."Lukoil is already in Venezuela, and Mr. Bush doesn't like it," Chavez said.
As a case in point, Chavez recalled the drop in oil prices several years ago. "However, thanks to cooperation between OPEC, Russia and Norway, which is not an OPEC member, we prevented sales of oil at ridiculous prices," Chavez said.
It's not too late to change world
Here we are, fully aware that the civilization we have created is wildly unsustainable, and yet we refuse to adapt. Though the appetite for change is growing, governments and business would have us believe we simply can't afford to be smart.But as Gregory Greene's new movie, Escape From Suburbia, makes clear, we can't afford not to change.
Practical responses to peak oil
For those who came in late, it is increasingly clear that global oil reserves are reaching the point where half has been used up, called “peak oil”. After this point supply will no longer meet demand, and prices will rise increasingly steeply until oil becomes inaccessible.
India's Emissions May be Higher Due to Dams - Study
India's greenhouse gas emissions could be 40 percent higher than official estimates if methane released from dams is taken into account, according to a new study.
Earth, wind, solar fire fuel India future
Last week, a report released by the United Nations Environment Program said global investment in renewable energy, especially solar, wind and biofuel, rose from US$80 billion in 2005 to $100 billion last year, with an especially high rate of growth in developing countries such as India, China and Brazil. Renewable-energy investments in developing countries accounted for 21% of the total.
Life After Oil Is Coming...But Will We Be Ready?
The year is 2040. Symbolic of Edmonton’s rust-belt economy, electric cars whiz by an abandoned, derelict Refinery Row, although there are plans to turn part of the old complex into a petroleum heritage site. In a nearby run-down cafe, Chad and John talk about the boom years of their youth. They recall the time before Alberta got left behind, as governments and consumers worldwide turned away from dwindling oil and coal energy sources in a mass response to global warming and other environmental concerns. They discuss the time before downtown Calgary became an abandoned shell of empty buildings, before Fort McMurray turned into a ghost town, before so many of Alberta’s youth moved to Atlantic Canada to take plentiful jobs in the red-hot tidal-power industry. “We never thought Alberta’s boom would end,” says John. “Yeah,” replies Chad, looking philosophical. “But the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.”
Hey, John, I have news for you: there is a finite supply of oil on Earth and we are going to run out of it! If the demand for oil continues at the present rate, the world will need 140 million barrels a day by 2035.A decline in oil production is on the horizon, and when it does get here (as it undeniably will), there will be very little time for us to react.
Norsk Hydro Dismisses Reports of Ormen Lange Phase 2 Overruns
Norsk Hydro (NHY) Wednesday shrugged off press reports that the cost of the second phase of its Ormen Lange gas project had overrun by as much as $2.9 billion, saying a final development plan wasn't ever decided...."Contractor costs over the last year-and-a-half have increased, which is a worldwide thing," said Hydro spokesman Halvor Molland.
New Delhi hosts IPI talks on Iran gas pipeline
Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has said that his country urgently requires natural gas to overcome the current energy crisis, and could not understand public objections to the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, which would go a long way in ameliorating the shortfall.
Climate and energy major threats to European agriculture, conference finds
The starting point of the event was the outcome of a foresight process carried out by the EU's Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR). A Foresight Expert Group, set up in June 2006, developed scenarios based on the factors most likely to disrupt European agriculture over the next 20 years.
Iran's Black Market Bull Takes Off
As petrol station managers tried to institute what was literally an eleventh-hour recalibration of their pumps, rigging them to shut off after a certain amount is pumped (though I wonder, how would each pump tally a monthly aggregate for each driver?), panicked queues formed.Some pictures are visible on reform journalist's Ruzbeh Mir-Ebrahimi's website, here: http://www.shabnameha.net/spip.php?article394. Twenty-seven-year-old blogger Mehdi Mohseni wrote that the "last minute announcement of the start of the rationing caused a predictable psychological shock in society." "However," he adds, "one must admit that an important step has been taken toward the efficient use of energy."
House Votes to Maintain Offshore Drilling Limits
The House rejected two attempts to lift sections of the moratorium on oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf.
It seems Learsy thinks small non-profit groups like ours -- the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas/USA -- are in cahoots with the oil companies, joined at the hip in a conspiracy to hype the "fabricated drama of peak oil" in order to drive up oil prices and profits. This is a delusional notion with zero substance that deserves no further comment.
No Short Supply of Freaking Doom!
He reveals the problem so elegantly, almost Newtonian, when he explains, "Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature."And how to explain that it IS occurring right now? He easily brushes me off, like he would some pesky fly buzzing around his head, by saying, "This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the U.S. economy will be forced to shut down."
Innovation Keeps Prudhoe Bay Going Beyond Expectations
If Rip van Winkle had been an oil worker who dozed off at Prudhoe Bay in June 1977 and awoke the same day 30 years later, he would be flabbergasted.When Rip and his buddies turned the valve three decades ago, on June 20, 1977, starting the first flow of oil into the newly completed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, most Alaskans and even many oil workers were of the opinion that the North Slope oil fields would be depleted and shut down by now.
Fun with Density and Transit Statistics
Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. is too spread out for workable mass transportation except in a few high-density cities. ...Is that accurate?
Iran's oil restrictions 'a warning for Australia'
Dr Bezdek says the events in Iran provide a warning for Australians."Even though they're probably temporary and are indeed self-induced, they may just be a tiny precursor of what's in store for the world as we approach peak oil and petrol shortages occur and prices increase and people are not able to get the petrol they require," he said.
Oil Workers in 6 Brazilian States Approve Strike in July
Oil workers in six states for state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, have voted to go on strike in July, Brazil's main Oil Workers' Federation said Wednesday.
Ireland: Stuck at crossroads . . . without fuel
IRELAND will be one of the most exposed European economies to future carbon fuel shortages with a staggering 70pc of Irish electricity generation set to be derived from natural gas supplies.The warning came as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) previewed their landmark carbon fuel conference next September.
NYC power outage jams six subway lines
A power outage on Wednesday briefly brought some of New York's busiest subway trains to a halt, forced the Metropolitan Museum of Art to close and left tens of thousands in the dark on a sweltering afternoon.
After Venezuela, ConocoPhillips May Redouble Canada Efforts
Venezuela's intransigence on its challenging crude-oil projects may send ConocoPhillips' into the arms of Canada's oil sands.Venezuela confirmed Tuesday that ConocoPhillips would exit the Orinico river basin, home to ventures that produce low-quality, or heavy, oil, after the Houston-based energy company refused the terms covering a new ownership structure for its projects. ExxonMobil Corp. also said it wasn't able to reach agreement with Venezuela.
The ramifications for oil markets may be far-reaching. Venezuela's oil output has been in steady decline, and it's unlikely that the state-owned oil company, newly instated as operator of the Orinoco projects, has the access to technology and project-management prowess to turn the trend around.
Kremlin lays claim to huge chunk of oil-rich North Pole
It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia's claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf.
Bolivia: Four Companies Operating Under New Contracts
Four of the 12 hydrocarbons companies that signed contracts with Bolivia's government are operating under the new deals, according to hydrocarbons and energy minister Carlos Villegas.The government forced foreign companies to sign the contracts - of which 37 are for production and seven for exploration - to give the state a larger take of hydrocarbons assets as part of President Evo Morales' nationalization program.
Cannon lashes out at Dems for oil shale delay
Rep. Chris Cannon charged Wednesday that the House had "put the brakes" on oil shale development in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming by passing a measure to prohibit more permits until an in-depth study was completed.
Congress wants U.S. coal industry destroyed: exec
A senior coal company executive on Wednesday lambasted U.S. lawmakers for proposing caps on emissions blamed for global warming, saying the Democrats were out to destroy America's coal industry.
Pemex Sets Oil Output Goal of 3.1 Mln Barrels a Day
Petroleos Mexicanos, the third- biggest oil supplier to the U.S., set a goal of producing an average of 3.1 million barrels of crude oil per day until 2012, even as output at its largest oil field declines.Pemex, as Mexico's oil monopoly is known, won't spare any expense to optimize the production of Cantarell, the offshore oil field where output declined by 12 percent last year, to help keep production from slipping under 3.1 million barrels per day, said Chief Executive Officer Jesus Reyes Heroles.
Qatari Doubts Concept of Gas Cartel
Qatar will seek cooperation with Russia in the natural gas industry, but the tiny energy-rich Gulf state sees "difficulties" in forming a gas cartel similar to OPEC, Qatar's oil minister said Wednesday.
Floating wind turbines? 2009 could see first
Floating wind turbines would represent a technological breakthrough for offshore power generation, which has had to rely on shallow sites for turbines installed on the seabed.
Waste Management to tap landfill methane
Waste Management Inc., the nation's largest garbage hauler and landfill operator, plans to spend roughly $400 million over the next five years building facilities at 60 landfills to convert methane gas to electricity, its most ambitious renewable energy project to date.
Desertification threat to global stability: U.N. study
Desertification could drive tens of millions of people from their homes, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, a U.N. study warned on Thursday.People displaced by desertification put new strains on natural resources and on other societies nearby and threaten international instability, the 46-page study by the U.N. University showed.
China, ONGC, Pertamina Iraq Contracts to be Amended
Iraq's top oil and gas advisor said Wednesday that oil contracts signed during the Saddam era by China, Vietnam, India and Indonesia would be amended within the framework of the country's proposed oil law.
Can U.S. Adopt Europe's Fuel-Efficient Cars?
I doubt that european vehicles meet the average of 35 mpg. While I myself had several diesels for rent in the previous years which consumed 6 litres/100 km or less (that is 36 mpg or more), there are large amounts of vehicles consuming considerably more.
Last summer on vacation I had a Peugeot 407 which burned 6 litres/100km (36mpg), occupied with 5 persons and baggage(!) Most distances were on the highway.
In autumn I had a Renault Megane for rent which is a great car in my eyes. It took around 5 litres/100km (46.8 mpg), also mostly on highways.
A month ago I had a Volkswagen Golf TDI, a very economical car with a little more than 4 litres (58 mpg).
BTW - if you want a quick formula to calculate mpg to litres/100km (which is commonly used in Europe) just divide 234 through mpg (or vice versa).
IIRC the average in the UK a few years ago was 33mpg. Not sure what the current figures are, but it would be relatively easy to hit an average of 35mpg I'd guess, and even 40mpg would be achievable.
even 40mpg would be achievable
The Audi A2 is one of those cars nobody wanted in Germany. Production was stopped in 2005. The A2 got more than 80 mpg.
But at least Audi has the option of restarting the production of the A2. Unlike Ford, GM, and Chrysler who destroyed a generation of engineers by having them work on add-ons for pickup frames, otherwise known as SUVs.
If we're talking about U.S. miles per U.S. gallon, 6 liters/100km is equal to 39.25 mpg.
You are right - I failed to use my own formula properly.
Crikey, dont tell me you have different miles as well! So thats pints, gallons, pounds, miles, ounces[?], any more different I should learn?
We have differing standards of truth and honesty, too. Just watch Fox news and listen to Rush Limbaugh!
Miles are the same; gallons are different. A calculator/converter for US/UK mpg and litres/100km is included on the last line on this page. (enter a number in any box then hit tab/enter).
This should be easy...
There are still going to be loopholes large enough to dive a truck through, although it will have to be a wide truck with an extra-long wheelbase. The Ethanol loophole also remains. Finally, there's the measuring stick actually used for the mileage.
I believe the same EPA test currently used in 2007 will be used for the future CAFE measurement. The figures reported on the window stickers of cars is reduced 10% and 22% (city/highway respectively) from the EPA test. The city score counts for 55% and the highway score counts for 45% of the total CAFE score. So, working things backwards to calculate CAFE score: city/(1-10%)*0.55 + highway/(1-22%)*0.45. Simplifying: CAFE = city * 0.611 + highway * 0.577
A Honda Accord with 4 cylinder engine and automatic transmission is rated 24/34 on the window sticker, which equates to 34.28 MPG CAFE. So, I guess Honda is going to have to find a single MPG in the next 12 years to get their best-selling vehicle up to standard.
The Toyota Camry 4-cylinder with automatic scores 33.7 CAFE. Even the V6 version makes 31.3 CAFE.
The 2007 Mercedes E320 Bluetec scores 37.8 CAFE while the 2006 VW Jetta TDI scores 45.7 CAFE. Since both of these vehicles can run on renewable biofuels, so perhaps the ethanol loophole can be extended to them also, in which case the Jetta will score something around 80 MPG--not bad!
I have followed landfill methane for a while now. Here is a good site from the EPA (US).
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/
Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge of these projects? Are there any benefits to designing landfills with the intent to recover the methane versus what we do now which is retroactively 'mine' the methane?
Of course there are benefits, Keithster-one of the major ones being cutting the release of methane, a greenhouse gas, and a lot lower volume of waste to be buried. The problem is the same as all recycling-waste separation costs exceed the value of the products. If costs were not a problem we could recycle all the metals, turn the plastic and tires back into oil, make all the compost to replace chemical fertilisers, and feel very virtuous.
The problem is Americans don't want to hand-sort garbage for slave wages. Why don't you volunteer?
I saw a news story back in the 80's about a town in WA state. They had scales on the garbage trucks and they weighed the garbage collected from each household and charged them accordingly. This incentivized people to remove recyclables from their trash.
Everywhere I have lived, they simply charge a flat rate and people discard whatever they want. Driving up the price would be one simple way to reduce the amount going to landfills and increase the pre-sorting of recyclables.
In Japan, I believe they are required to pre-sort their trash into 14 different categories.
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
14?!?
I live in Tokyo and do three, burnable, unburnable and recyclable (cans, glass).
I can't find the article I read that mentioned 14 categories but here's a quote from the NYT.
How Do Japanese Dump Trash? Let Us Count the Myriad Ways
This article is from 2005. The one I saw was from earlier this year. I guess I need to be more specific as garbage collection varies from city to city just as it does here.
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
Yokohama garbage collection guide
Burnable Garbage
Non-burnable
Cans, bottles and PET bottles
Plastic Containers/Packaging
Recycle paper
Used Cloth
Spray Cans
Dry Cells
Small Metal Items
Oversized Items
Apparently some people take this quite seriously.
More specifically...
phreefallin,
Is that what passes for trashy behaviour in Japan?
Bad jokes aside, its a good idea,and wouldn't be onerous while the garbage is fresh. Probably helps hold down rats, too.
I was going to call him a garbage "nazi", but I think that term gets thrown around too often :)
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
Hello TODers,
Interesting mini-thread on recycling. Although I posted this before, please consider how badly Mexico recycles:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4916749.html
-------------------------------------
Litter choking streets throughout Mexico
Activists say public isn't only culprit — leaders and companies are also culpable
Mexican environmental officials say that only several dozen of Mexico's more than 2,500 cities, towns and villages have a landfill or other kind of municipal garbage dump.
-----------------------------------------------
Please click link for photo and much more text!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Okay, I get what you are saying.
And yes, my town has a similar list of garbage requirements. But 99% of the time my trash is only the three above mentioned categories. I only have three trash containers.
On the rare occasion I have to throw out a battery it has to be on the 4th thursday of the month. I thew out a matteress (futon) once, and I had to pay 500yen (5$) for a sticker to do that.
Its not nearly so severe as you'd think. The only one going through my garbage is the local alley cat :-)
Here in Sweden almost all trash goes directly to a district heating central and are burnt for energy. And yes, the furnaces do not emit poisonous gases, apparantly.
Recycleable or hazardous waste are supposed to be sorted and left at local recycling stations, of which several are located in most neighbourhoods, supposedly within walking distance (I live in the countryside and thus have a 2 kilometer walk to the recycling station). At the least people in general sort out paper and glass, but you could also sort metal, plastics and cloth. Rare categories like oils, car batteries, kitchen appliances, electronics etc are picked up twice a year outside the local firestation, or can be left year-round at the main recycling station, which features some 30-35 different categories of recycling containers.
Trash disposal at the household are solved differently, at my old dwelling they weighed everything automatically. At my current residence it's a flat fee, but bio-degradable waste should go into black bags, burnable into white bags, and they are sorted automatically - white bags goes to district heating, black bags goes to a local biogas fermenter unit, which produces pure methane and soil/fertilizer. The biogas serves some of the local buses, the soil/fertilizer goes back to the farms.
Landfills still exist in Sweden, but there aren't a lot of them, and I guess only non-usable trash like plaster, rock-wool insulation, fiberglass etc goes there.
There are discussions if the recycling system is wasteful, energywise, but people don't have to recycle, everything can go into burnable waste if they wish, although it would be illegal to put batteries and other hazardous waste there. Not that anyone would be caught, that is.
Anyway, the entire recycling system requires fossil fuels. Or maybe the biogas could be used to fuel the waste trucks in the future. I guess eventually people will burn their waste in the backyard, and you can imagine what that will do to the environment in the cities...
The upcoming shortage of fossil fuels will cause us to consume less, and therefore produce less waste, so it might play out nicely enough anyway.
When our youngest stops using diapers, we will switch to emptying the trashcan every four weeks, instead of two weeks as we do now. All biodegradable kitchen waste goes into our own composts and back into our vegetable patch.
The local council here in Hastings, New Zealand has a good system.
You can only put out 'official' orange plastic rubbish bags for collection, and you have to pay for the bags. Thus, the fewer the bags of rubbish you throw out, the cheaper it is.
What's even better is that the recycling collection is done on the same day as the rubbish collection. So you put all your 'rubbish' (or garbage for our US friends) out at the same time.
We have gone down from putting out one bag of (land-fill) rubbish a week, to only putting one out every 3 weeks. We now put out more recycling than rubbish.
By the way, there are lots of great rubbish-reducing ideas out there. After recycling, I would say composting is the biggest way to reduce the amount of 'waste' you throw out. And a really good suggestion I saw recently was to build a bird table, and then feed the birds your left-overs.
Landfills have to have gas collection and venting systems already, to prevent methane buildup, so collection is a non-issue. Gas prices have to be pretty high however, to justify the costs of power generation from this gas.
It is a lot cheaper if you can find a way to simply burn it for heating purposes somewhere nearby.
Memphis light gas and water has made an arrangement with a company to purchase the landfill gas. It is in operation I believe and has been for a year or two I think. Its costing them less than NG cost, but how its worked out I don't know.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Austin bought 4 MW of landfill gas generation over a dozen years ago. There are dozens, if not hundreds, in operation today in the USA. I am surprised it took Memphis so long (competing with cheap coal ?)
Best Hopes for universal use of land fill gas instead of just flaring it off,
Alan
Alan,
MLGW is owned by the citizens and the top jobs are political appointments. The recent stories from the press about their situation with scandals and more is a litany. Though being part of TVA the rates in that town are reasonable. Though the stories will soon appear with the heat about the high bills, as does each winter.
One fiasco that they did was start a venture running fiber optic cable for high speed for business and even to citizens in the future. Went no-where (hmmm) and now is being sold at a loss the citizens of Memphis.
The political chaos in that city is huge. Criminal prosecutions, misdeeds in office at all levels it seems. Conspiracy to hire a stripper to take comprising photos of the mayor (called King Willy by many these days) to force him out of office. The stripper had to be taken back to Nashville for probation violation of a previous sentence, And she was also a flight attendant.
Memphis behind, lol, I lived in Atlanta and Memphis, and know many other cities. Memphis is truly something. A big small town. Has its share of major corporations founded and moved there, and the largest bond selling office outside wall street too.
as for flaring off the gas. Many years ago they built some soccer fields on top of a landfill. They are located in a park area called "shelby farms". A buddy of mine had a job long ago of painting the lines on the field. He discovered one night that the crack were letting gas out, because he fired it up. Well a few nights later he got it in his head that it would be cool to have his brother and a few friends out for a "weenie" roast using the gas and take pictures etc. Well all went well into a big pocket was lit and the gas flared up into the night sky and people on a busy road say it and called the fire department. The "guys" ditched the picnic stuff in the car and then acted like they saw it and were there to check it out. Well thats what I 'heard" anyway. They now have tapped it and drain it off every so often I hear.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
My father in law designs brick factories. They've designed several that went in next to land fills to use the landfill gas to fire the brick. This is apparently much cheaper than buying regular NG. the downside is it's less predictable. With standard NG, you can count on firing your brick X number of hours at a predictable temperature. With the landfill gas, the temperature must be constantly monitored and the firing time adjusted bc/ you just can't count on a steady input to your kiln. Nevertheless, when and where possible, this approach is cheaper for brick manufacturers and also shields them from seasonal variations in NG prices.
Landfills have to have gas collection and venting systems already, to prevent methane buildup, so collection is a non-issue.
But the issue is the gas is not JUST methane. You have Nitrogen, Sulfur and other gas mixed in. These things should be accounted for in the design, thus making it non-trivial.
Better not to throw anything away:
http://www.zerowaste.org/case.htm
A big part of the problem is that almost nobody cooks whole foods from scratch any more. Most people (Americans, I am referring to here) don't even know how.
Processed foods are highly packaged foods. That accounts for much of the household waste generated.
How true is this? Don't manufacturers have an incentive to use everything? We joke about what goes into sausages, but I imagine that there isn't a lot of waste; what I would throw out, a manufacturer would be able to sell as livestock feed.
I suspect manufacturers are much much better about using economies of scale to avoid waste than most consumers could ever be. Unless you somehow do aerobic composting & have a fish pond for leftovers, a major food manufacturer is probably better than you. I know I just through out a chicken carcass when I've taken the meat off of it.
I found one article, http://www.ncpa.org/studies/s165/s165.html
which implies that the packaging is a solution rather than a problem. I don't know how biased it is, but 40% more household waste in Mexico convinces me.
The whole "cook things yourself" (while tastier and better for you) seems more wasteful, all things considered. It seems more like nostalgic thinking than rational thinking.
Depends on what packaging is used for the 'raw' ingredients surely. If you buy meat wrapped in just butcher's paper, place fruit & veg straight into reusable bags, and buy other packaged ingredients according to the largest and simplest forms of packaging available (e.g 50kg sacks of rice or flour), then this surely produces far less waste than buying pre-prepared individual frozen meals that often come with 3 or 4 layers of packaging.
It certainly costs a lot less, but yes, requires more effort.
You count packaging, largely plastic, some metal (cans) a paper as a zero cost.
Reducing the solid waste stream is, quite frankly, not a major social benefit.
I would rather throw away avocado skin & pits, peach & plum pits, chicken bones, etc than throw away non renewables that generate GHG.
Due to NIMBYs, finding solid waste disposal sites is a problem in some parts fo the country, but hardly a big deal in the overall picture.
Packaging and processing is bad. Composting is good (not possible for me), eating low on the food chain is good.
Energy spent processing and transporting food is bad.
I will take my farmer's truck delivering Creole tomatoes (25 cents/lb cheaper than WalMart 9 blocks away due to simpler supply chain BTW) and okra (NA at WalMart) and mustard greens (likewise) to Zara's corner grocery 3 times/week. Harvested that morning. I walk there, take them home, prepare them and eat them :-))
The farmer uses recycled cardboard boxes most of the time. he takes his empties back and accepts any of a certain size that Zara's gets from other suppliers.
Processed food is largely unnecessary. I am shocked when I visit Phoenix grocery stores how little real food they have and how much hyper-processed "Hot Pockets" etc. etc. they have filling an entire store. 80% of that "food" did not exist 30 or 40 years ago and should disappear.
Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are MUCH bigger problems that solid wastes for our societies.
Best Hopes for Reducing US food processing by 90%,
Alan