Pollution

FOOD WASTE

Have we ever thought that every bit of food we waste, the food that gets thrown in the trash, is having a huge impact on the environment we live in? Data shows that “every year 229 Million tons are produced, every year 78 Million tons are never eaten”. (refed.org)Reducing food waste is one of the top solutions to climate change, it’s also the easiest step we can take in our daily life. Americans waste about 133 billion pounds of food a year, up to forty percent of the food produced in the U.S was thrown away ending up in landfills or incinerators. “Food waste often winds up in landfills, where it rots and releases large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.” (by Denise Chow)Scientists had come up with a solution by “making use of a pair of simple chemical processes - hydrothermal liquefaction and anaerobic digestion - we could turn food waste into environmentally friendly biofuel.” (by Denise Chow) Scientist invented “a zero-waste closed loop lifecycle, Farm Powered Organics-to-renewable energy combines unusable food and beverage waste and farm manure to generate clean, renewable energy and low carbon fertilizer.” (Vanguard Renewables)

Three days without water and seven days without food, a person will die. Therefore, water has a close connection with human beings. Animals, plants, and all living things in the world are inseparable from water and need nourishment from it to survive. The amount of water you drink every day, and the water you use for bathing, washing hands and dishes, water plays a huge role in your daily life. However, do you know how much freshwater is available on earth? The answer is very little. Only 2.5% of the water on earth is freshwater, and more than 97% is seawater. Of this 2.5%, about two-thirds is frozen as glaciers and snow, and roughly one-third is groundwater. This means that only about 0.3% of the earth's freshwater is available, distributed in lakes, swamps, rivers and streams. It is obvious that water is so precious to human beings that we should cherish this gift from nature, but instead, we carelessly destroy and waste it.

You must have seen the photos, tons of garbage piled up on the ground to form the so-called landfill dump. Nature's precious land resources have become a natural dumping site for people. In most cases, the construction of landfills results in the destruction of animal habitats. “A landfill typically covers 600 acres. There are currently over 3,000 operational landfills in the US, which has resulted in the loss of up to 1,800,000 acres of habitat.” (by Kayla Vasarhelyi) July 2022, a high-resolution satellite image shows a cloud of the powerful greenhouse gas methane near a waste facility in India. The release of methane gas from landfills is the most urgent environmental issue. As the organic mass in landfills like food scraps decomposes in the absence of oxygen, methane gas is released and generates the potent greenhouse gas. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and responsible for about 30% of the Earth’s warming. According to the statistics, it is one of the world's strongest persistent methane emissions and a significant contributor to climate change since it is "84 times more effective at absorbing the sun’s heat than carbon dioxide". (by Kayla Vasarhely) Hindustan Times News stated, "Landfills and wastewater are responsible for about 20% of the methane emissions generated from human activity.