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The environmental impacts of food waste
Food waste literature review
An essay about food waste
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Recommended: The environmental impacts of food waste
One of the major pollution problems that affect our drinking water include animal-feeding operations. Within the United States, “animals like cattle, chickens, lambs, are fattened up before slaughter in tens of thousands of pens” (72). As a result, manure builds up because the animals are kept in their pens for such long durations. Even though the manure is moved to other areas for storage or use, rain often causes it to seep into clean waterways and aquifers (72). Our water supply is compromised because “California Central Valley alome is home to 1.4 million cows.
Essay 1 Every year about a third of what the world produces is wasted. This equates to 2.9 trillion pounds of food. The wastage comes from our homes, restaurants, and even the farmers who produce it. Food wastage is an epidemic with dangerous outcomes; from deforestation to the draining of our fresh-water bodies, the population is in trouble.
Food is the sustaining life force that drives the human race forwards from day to day. As daily consumers of food products, it is automatically expected that the producers of such important products aim to produce goods that will help the consumer and attribute to their health. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. At the turn of the twentieth century, food sanitation in factories was at an all time low. Adding to this issue were the harsh conditions in which the workers were forced to work in.
Recycling Should it be Mandatory for Everyone? Texas is the second largest state in the U.S.A. It is approximately 790 miles long and 660 miles wide. It also takes 12 hours just to drive through it. In our ocean there is a trash pile that is the size of Texas, just floating around.
$ 31 billion worth of food is trashed every year in Canada. We on average throw out 1 in 5 bags of groceries. Many commercial companies and our government are ignoring this problem while the rest of the world has started to take action. Behind a Walmart store there is roughly 12 bins of consumable food thrown out. Not into the compost but into the garbage.
In the US, 40% of food produced, or approximately 365 million pounds of food, is wasted each day. Food waste, however, is a problem that extends beyond America, affecting billions of people as a global issue. The overwhelming amounts of food that are being discarded contribute to global warming and climate change, and prevent the massive number of hungry people from being able to eat nourishing meals. Humanity as a whole must be more mindful of the Earth and its health, as we are the source which most directly affect it. Due to the profound environmental impacts of food waste, a reduction in the amount disposed is necessary to create a more sustainable environment, and humans have a responsibility to protect the planet, even if it requires drastic changes to the current food system.
The article, “Food Waste Is Becoming Serious Economic and Environmental Issue, Report Says,” by Ron Nixon, talks about food waste and of plans on how to stop it. Specifically, Nixon argues that there are millions of people all over the country that don’t have enough to eat. Also that there are people that go to bed hungry most days, while others are throwing away extra scraps they didn’t eat. Nixon writes about the tons of food thrown in the trash every week, resulting in economic and environmental issues. Also about how the Earth’s landfills then get filled up with even more garbage.
The consumption of red meat has increased significantly in recent years. The link between red meat consumption and climate change is greatly evident. Therefore, this issue may be considered positive for various stakeholders, while also having a negative impact on others. Not only is the consumption of meat a major contributor to climate change, but the production of the meat consumed influences the climate as well. Livestock produces a considerable amount of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, which accounts for more than 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Nowadays debris is an integral part of humanity life. Mankind thinks about how to make the product easier and cheaper to use, but nobody cares what happens with waste after it was used. We contaminate the environment with every decade increasingly: muddied air and water, global warming are an output of human life. The worst thing is that from such attitude other living beings are dying. Millions of animals and birds cannot withstand such environmental changes; their populations become smaller and, eventually, disappear altogether from the face of the earth.
In “The Hidden Life of Garbage,” Heather Rogers writes about the waste disposal in the United States and how dangerous is getting. Land dumping has been the main disposal method for many years because of the low cost. She writes how landfill is a designed construction in which the trash is far away from the environment. Therefore, isolation is accomplished with a bottom liner and a daily covering of soil. She also says that a sanitary landfill uses a clay liner to isolate the trash from the environment.
Since the animals carry diseases and we are eating it, human health has potentially decreased due to the increase of disease being spread. Additionally, factory farms are having negative impacts on our environment. “Hog, chicken, and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states” (Organic Consumers Association). It is shown how these factory farms are contaminated the land around us due to the waste produced by these animals and the unsanitary dispose of such
There can be numerous positive points for not wasting food which is described throughout the articles. Food is necessary because it helps a person nourish and grow. When all the wasted food goes to the garbage it gets ravaged and gets put in landfills. Even though, you cannot live without food it is not ok to have an excess amount of food. “U.S. throws away half of all food produce” By Suzanne Goldenberg, “How Norway is selling out-of-date food to help tackle waste” By Daniel Boffey and, “Ending world hunger by stopping food waste in the fields” By Bjorn Lomborg all analyze how food waste is not good for anyone or anybody.
The world is experiencing a dilemma today. Many people suffer from hunger, malnutrition, and other problems caused by the lack of sufficient food. However, many other people buy or order excessive foods and waste a lot. In my community, food waste is much more serious than food shortage, and it is easy to see that people throw foods in the dustbin and the foods indeed are still eatable. Food waste is a serious problem.
Introduction People tend to consume a lot, when there is consumption, there is waste – and that waste becomes a big problem that needs taken care of, which costs a lot of time, space and resources. If not managed, in turn, the world that we live in will become a hazardous place for all living things. According to the World Bank, people throughout the world, “spend $2.3 trillion a year on food and beverages alone” (Global Consumption Database, 2018), that is quite a lot. In addition to that, the world count mentions that, “we throw out over 50 tons of household waste every second. A number that will double by 2030”
In a study by Vollard A.M., Ali S., van Asten H.A., Ismid I.S., Widjaja S., Visser L.G., Surjadi C.h., and van Dissel J.T. on “Risk Factors for Transmission of Food-borne Illness in Restaurants and Street vendors in Jakarta, Indonesia”, the risk factors of contracting food borne diseases were affected by poor hand washing hygiene of the food handlers (street vendors), further relating to the fact that the food handlers may come in direct contact with the food by using their bare hands when handling the food, and also their low educational level which hinders them from the basic knowledge of proper personal hygiene which led to faecal contamination of drinking water, dish water and ice cube. A study by M.P. Azanza, C. Gatchalian, and M. Ortega,