Tackling the waste disposal and food crises simultaneously presents excellent opportunities for food producers and manufacturers. It is the nexus between dumping waste and growing food – where joined up commercial and public sector strategies can play a crucial role in negotiating the food security challenge.
Tackling the waste disposal and food crises simultaneously presents excellent opportunities for food producers and manufacturers to establish sustainable solutions to both issues.
Some measures are in their infancy – especially the types requiring high-tech equipment or large capital investment – but others are tried and tested practices improving in efficiency and popularity all the time.
This trend of using waste as a resource is essential and is driven by the combined pressure of global warming, limited landfill space, energy needs, legislation and social and public demands. The pressure of food security will only intensify the focus on resource reuse.
Food waste represents one third of municipal waste in the UK; in addition, a further 1.9m tonnes of commercial food waste is landfilled. This figure has grown through strict standards that exclude lower quality raw materials from the food chain. This is fair enough because safety must always be a priority, but it means huge volumes are dumped in landfill where it contributes significant levels of greenhouse gases – especially methane. In relation to global warming potential, methane is 20 times more potent than CO2. This is a travesty when it could be given a valuable second life.
It is precisely here – the nexus between dumping waste and growing food – where joined up commercial and public sector strategies can play a crucial role in negotiating the food security challenge. The trend of recycling food waste, digestate and biosolids as partial substitutes to manufactured fertilisers is growing. It makes good sense, economically, environmentally and for food security.
There are numerous opportunities where, even within stringent food safety and environmental controls, waste can be used with beneficial outcomes: feeding food products to livestock, composting and biogas production are just a few examples and all are important alternatives to dumping.
The progress of technology and new thinking has developed many of these prospects, yet there are still significant barriers. Cost, infrastructural limitations, the planning process, legislation and imperfections in the waste segregation process are slowing down adoption. Huge volumes of contaminated feedstocks still cannot be processed because of a lack of technological know-how or because regulations render
them unusable.
Given the stage we are at in terms of needing to reduce environmental impacts and boost food production, investigation into waste reduction and waste use must be sustained and best practice implemented on the largest scale possible. Not doing so invites questions about how serious we are about safeguarding food supplies and protecting the planet.
For more information please contact Phil Metcalfe by e-mail phil.metcalfe@adas.co.uk or telephone 01902 693224.