We’re all in it together one way or another. The great carbon battle.
The sources of the problem are of course many. And one of them, inocuous as it may seem, is actually our food waste.
The thing is food rots when your back is turned. Rotting food lets off a lot of carbon dioxide and methane, whether it’s hanging around in your rubbish bin, lying on your compost heap, or has been shuffled out-of-sight out-of-mind onto your local landfill.
We can’t make the decisions that industry, government and the other big guys can. But we can stop throwing our food waste out in a way that can only add to the problem. It might not seem like much, but its one of those classic things like changing a light bulb that, if everyone did it, would actually make a real difference in the end.
Here’s a fresh new study that throws some light on the topic. In London alone, it seems, people produce food waste which emits 6.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. You can read more about it here on the UK site Recycling & Waste Management News & Information.
If you’ve ever walked the streets of London you’d have some idea of the vast amounts of waste that are put out on footpaths each night to be collected. And it turns out that 25 per cent of it is food waste. That’s the 25 per cent that attracts rats, it’s the 25 per cent that stinks in the summer, and its the 25 per cent that absolutely should be used in a better way — returned to the soil where it belongs.
Bokashi anyone?
PS Bill Bryson has written a great article here in the Daily Mail, “Why are we turning lovely Britain into a giant rubbish tip?” Read it!!
Bokashiworld 