It is really happening. The world throws away more food than it consumes. Food Waste is a world wide problem we are facing today.
But, it seems like the majority of the Americans still don't see the problem it brings and the impacts it has to us, and the earth as a planet. According to a survey by the American Chemistry Council, 75 percent of the Americans "don't care how it impacts the environment".
The Governing reports that the Americans alone throw away 40 percent of their food, costing them, at least, $640 per year. Because of this, food is the single biggest material found in landfills.
Studies are now considering the fact that thrown away food can be converted into useful energy, giving a whole new dimension to the word recycling.
More and more initiatives are looking into producing biogas-a renewable energy that cities can use to run municipal fleets and produce electricity, from the decomposing and spoiling food wasted and thrown away.
One of the states actively participating in the motion is Philadelphia. Starting in January, the city mandated in-sink garbage disposals in all new construction. The government is encouraging their residents to pulverize their food scraps "into a slurry".
When the powdered food will then be travelling through the drain, to the city's facilities that would later convert it to fertilizer and biogas. The biogas generated can be used to power the city's wastewater treatment plants.
In addition to energy savings, the city estimates that thanks to fewer trips to the landfill, it will save about $3 million a year in trucking costs.
Back in the 1950s, when the suburbs are booming, several cities like Detroit, Indianapolis and other Western cities have tried implementing a required in-sink disposal, written inn their building codes.
But, Kendall Christiansen, a former senior consultant to the company InSinkErator says, "Philadelphia's code adoption is, in my estimation, the first in a potential new wave of interest sparked by recent demonstration projects in six cities and enabled by a paradigm shift from wastewater to water resource recovery [practices]."
