Pollution and Waste
A big part of living green is dealing with pollution and waste. Whether rural or urban, toxicity due to pollution and waste is nasty. All levels of government confront pollution, waste reduction, and their management, but not always successfully, for various reasons, not the least of which is cost. On a global scale, air and water pollution are big challenges.
Most of us manage to put the garbage out, do some recycling and handle compost; yet we think little of food waste. It is a big issue which we as individuals can easily tackle personally, So, let's start there.
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Food Waste
Nearly one-third of all the world's food production is lost or wasted between farm and fork. With a global human population of 8 billion, that's a lot of mouths that could otherwise have been fed. Further, "organic and kitchen waste makes up about 30% of the waste disposed by Canadian households. Studies indicate that produce (fruits and vegetables), breads and cereals are the most wasted food groups in Canadian homes, and that most of this waste is avoidable. However, research also indicates that many consumers are unaware of the avoidable food waste that they generate (Parizeau, 2018)."[Pol-1]
We eat everyday, so we have a daily heads up reminder to help the planet and do something to minimize food and other waste.
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Many resources are available where you can gain knowledge of and find easy techniques to reduce food waste. Notably, the Love Food Hate Waste will help you plan, use up, and keep food fresh. In the Annex of Taking Stock: Reducing Food Loss and Waste in Canada you'll find many other websites and resources for food waste reduction.
It is inescapable that humans need to eat. So, knowing how our food gets to our mouths from land, and sea, will show us where we can limit and avoid food waste as human population increases—thus more mouths to feed. So let's explore food waste from the perspective that we might a) help lessen the waste, and b) enable more effective land use.
Globally, about 5,940 kcal of food is grown per person per day. Food is typically measured in calories, but from a nutrient standpoint, sometimes in proteins. Right off the bat some 340 kcal don't get harvested, We may be overly-fussy about the quality, supply may exceed demand, or harvesting inefficiencies leave some on the ground. Another 330 kcal are lost in storage, often largely by methods as simple as the inability to seal or use a clean dry container.
Now we're left with 5,270 kcal out of which 130 kcal is replanted for the next harvest. Then, another 810 kcal go to non-food use such as biofuel with 1,740 kcal in crops being fed to animals and a further 70 kcal in international trading losses. From the 2,570 kcal left of plant matter, there are some small losses in distribution and food processing.
Including meat and dairy, the average person eats about 2,580 kcal, 180 kcal more than the average person needs for a healthy diet.[Pol-2]
Animals contribute 590 kcal to the human diet, but they eat 1,740 kcal per day per person in human edible food and 3,810 kcal of grass and pasture species. What is not converted into meat and dairy is used in keeping animals warm, digestion, burping up methane, and walking around. We can't eat grass and pasture, but some of it could be converted to vegitation edible by humans and some used for biodiversity, were it not otherwise being used inefficiently for meat and dairy. Yet, we don't have to give up eating beef burgers, but a reduction in consumption of meat and diary will have an impact on CO2 reduction.
Mike Berners-Lee charts this passage of protein from field to fork showing how we would have far more protein if we didn't feed human-edible protein to animals.
Figure 1. Protein Passage from Field to Fork
Protein specified in grams of protein per person per day. [Pol-3]
Globally we have a much greater supply of protein than we do calories, yet over-consumption of protein is not as easily detectible as over-consumption of calories as we all know from our predeliction to watching our calories. Berners-Lee points out that just over 100g of sweet potatoe can supply all the Vitamin A we need daily. Zinc and iron are 2 other essential nutrients that are better ingested via plant food than by meat. Along with proteins, a shortage of these 3 nutrients are the key causes of 'hidden hunger', a term which describes a lack of nutrients other than calories.[Pol-4] What is important to note is that animals are net reducers of zinc and iron. For example, an animal must consume 10 times the human-edible crops what they return in meat and dairy. Even if the comparable calorie intake is equal, and with a 4 times factor of iron in meat, direct human consumption of plants provide much more iron than from meat sourced from an animal eating ten times as much. Similarly, less than one fifth of the zinc which animals ingest is returned to us in meat and dairy. Unless you like beef liver, vitamin A in meat is not that high. Just eat up those sweet potatoes! Or, use an A supplement. Cutting back meat and dairy will reduce GHGs and allow more land availability for veggies and fruits.
Figure 2. Savings in greenhouse gas footprint of foods resulting from different disposal options. All solutions are trash, except for donating it for human consumption. 100% indicates problem solved, while negative numbers actually show more emissions. [Pol-3]
Food and agricultural emissions are significant--at least 23% of global GHG emissions. An October 2021 report from the FAOSTAT agri-food systems emissions database, found that in 2019, world-total food systems emissions were 31% of total anthropogenic emissions.[Pol-5]
Figure 3. Breakdown of food and agriculture's 23% contributions to humankind's greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint. [Pol-3]
Given the signifcant contribution of food to GHGs, our food choices are vital in curbing this contribution. For example, deforestation for farm animals can be reduced if soya bean farming were to replace beef cattle farming. Gram for gram, a soya bean has more of almost every essential nutrient than beef or lamb. But when you feed one to a steer or sheep, you only get 1/10 of the weight back in meat. Much less land is required for soya beans.
Pesticides
The Center for Biological Diversity expressed the gravity of pesticide polution, saying, "The 2021 peer-reviewed study Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates: A Hazard Assessment shows that pesticides widely used in American agriculture pose a grave threat to organisms needed for healthy soil, biodiversity, and the fight against climate change. We found that in 71% of cases studied, pesticides kill or harm soil invertebrates like earthworms, ants, beetles and ground-nesting bees.
We found negative effects across all studied pesticide classes, which shows that pesticides — as a set of chemical poisons — pose a clear hazard to soil life and are incompatible with healthy soil." [Pol-6]
Beyond the pesticide residue which may be on the produce we eat, we might ask what long term damage is being done to the soils in which that food is grown.
As little as 0.1% of an applied pesticide interacts with its targeted weed or pest. The remainder contaminates the soil, air and water and can have significant impacts throughout the ecosystem. Pesticides can also linger in the soil for years or decades after they are applied, continuing to harm soil health. Pesticide and fertilizer runoff into streams and lakes is a significant polutant with negative consequences. National use of herbicides and insecticides on cropland and pasture has grown from 190
Figure 4 [Pol-.7]
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million pounds of active ingredient in 1964, to an estimated 630 million pounds in 1988. Though increased use has resulted in increased crop production and other benefits, concerns about the potential adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and human health have grown steadily
Despite the great benefits and advantages that plastic materials provide to human beings and society, they have become ubiquitous and their harmful effects are now surfacing as of great concern. Humans constantly inhale and ingest microplastics; however, whether these contaminants pose a substantial risk to human health is far from understood. Plastics ingestion can occur through microplastics and their by-products (BPA and DEHP). Health problems as a result of ingestion are now being researched with great anxiety. Plastic material decomposition time is significant enabling plastic waste to accumulate in the environment, posing a major problem to fauna and flora.
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles defined as plastics less than five millimeters (0.2 inches) in diameter. There are two categories of microplastics: primary and secondary. Primary microplastics are tiny particles designed for commercial use, such as cosmetics, as well as microfibers shed from clothing and other textiles, such as fishing nets. Secondary microplastics are particles that result from the breakdown of larger plastic items, such as water bottles. This breakdown is caused by exposure to environmental factors, mainly the sun’s radiation and ocean waves. Media has made us aware of plastics floating in great quantities on the ocean surface. Some of this environmental pollution is from littering, but much is the result of storms, water runoff,
and winds that carry plastic—both intact objects and microplastics—into our oceans. Single-use plastics—plastic items meant to be used just once and then discarded, such as drinking straws—are the primary source of secondary plastics in the environment.
National Geographic summarizes the problem, saying "Microplastics have been detected in marine organisms from plankton to whales, in commercial seafood, and even in drinking water. Alarmingly, standard water treatment facilities cannot remove all traces of microplastics. To further complicate matters, microplastics in the ocean can bind with other harmful chemicals before being ingested by marine organisms."[Pol-9]
An alternative to petroleum-based plastics are biodegradable plastics. Three promising biodegradable plastics (TPS, PLA and PHAs) are among those proposed; however, there are currently no commercially viable biodegradable plastic polymers that can be used for the total replacement of conventional plastics, Future, modifications to the production methods and chemical structures of these proposed polymers will allow the replacement of conventional plastics by biodegradable plastics.
Once again, we don't know the severity of health issues that microplastics are causing, whether biodegradable or not. In the mean time, as more is learned, we must be extremely careful of how we dispose of plastics, recycling them where possible, to avoid the harmful side effects and health related issues.
Footnotes
[Pol-1] Parizeau,, 2018. Existing public opinion research on consumer food waste in Canada. Kate Parizeau, University of Guelph -- in Waste Reduction and Management Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, "Taking Stock, Reducing Food Loss and Waste in Canada"
[Pol-2] Berners-Lee, Mike, There is No Planet B::A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, Cambridge University Press, 2021
[Pol-3] Ibid
[Pol-4] Iodine is essential as well but supplements are so cheap, it's readily available
[Pol-5] Francesco N. Tubiello et al. Pre- and post-production processes increasingly dominate greenhouse gas emissions from agri-food systems.
Volume 14, issue 4 ESSD, 14, 1795–1809, 2022. https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2021-389/
[Pol-6] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/pesticides-and-soil-health/ 394 studies were analyzed encompassing 275 unique
Figure 5 [Pol-8]
species or types of soil organisms and 284 different pesticides or pesticide mixtures. While previous studies have looked at particular pesticide classes or types of organisms, this is the first review to incorporate all pesticide types, invertebrates that live or develop in the soil, and types of health outcomes available in the scientific literature.
[Pol-.7] https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1995/0152/fs15295_hydrologic.html
[Pol-8] Fritz Petersen, Jason A. Hubbart, The occurrence and transport of microplastics: The state of the science, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 758, 2021, 143936
[Pol-9] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/microplastics, Microplastics, page accessed Novemaber 13, 2022