Food waste in general shouldn't be adding extra CO2 in the environment, unless they are extrinsically adding tons of CO2 to the system from e.g. synthetic chemicals derived from oil.
What are you talking about? Food waste means excessive food production. Which means CO2 (from cow's farts, to oil burned transporting, to plastics and energy packaging and waste disposal). We should at least manage restaurant and supermarket food waste better, not just to reduce CO2, but to help people in need. At least in developed countries nobody should be dumpster diving.
I agree with you on principle but I believe there's real legal and health issues involved with giving the needy unfinished food that someone else touched. You mentioned restaurants specifically, they usually only cook what's directly given to someone so other than that their only waste would be barely edible (and uncooked) cuttings or spoiled stock. They might be more useful for biofuel than the homeless.
You mentioned restaurants specifically, they usually only cook what's directly given to someone so other than that their only waste would be barely edible (and uncooked) cuttings or spoiled stock. They might be more useful for biofuel than the homeless.
I said restaurants and supermarkets. From what I know, many restaurants have several dishes that are not cooked to order, friends working in various restaurants do normally take leftovers home. It may not be true if we are talking about a specific type or restaurant, e.g. a Chinese take-away where most dishes are done in reasonable time in a wok (with some pre-cooking for some ingredients), but various types of dishes that take hours to cook are prepared once per day (or two days). Since I mentioned Chinese, even those have lots of leftovers if they are a buffet-type restaurant. In fact there are several non-profits that try to organise feeding homeless with restaurant leftover donations, it's just not done everywhere and at a large enough scale. Similarly, supermarkets have to throw away on their "best before" date, even for food types that do not actually spoil around that time. Many people buy them right to the best before day as "reduced price", but a few hours later everything unsold is thrown away.
Seems like a stupid argument to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
Food waste in general shouldn't be adding extra CO2 in the environment, unless they are extrinsically adding tons of CO2 to the system from e.g. synthetic chemicals derived from oil.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Food waste means excessive food production. Which means CO2 (from cow's farts, to oil burned transporting, to plastics and energy packaging and waste disposal).
We should at least manage restaurant and supermarket food waste better, not just to reduce CO2, but to help people in need. At least in developed countries nobody should be dumpster diving.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you on principle but I believe there's real legal and health issues involved with giving the needy unfinished food that someone else touched. You mentioned restaurants specifically, they usually only cook what's directly given to someone so other than that their only waste would be barely edible (and uncooked) cuttings or spoiled stock. They might be more useful for biofuel than the homeless.
Re:Seems like a stupid argument to me. (Score:3)
You mentioned restaurants specifically, they usually only cook what's directly given to someone so other than that their only waste would be barely edible (and uncooked) cuttings or spoiled stock. They might be more useful for biofuel than the homeless.
I said restaurants and supermarkets. From what I know, many restaurants have several dishes that are not cooked to order, friends working in various restaurants do normally take leftovers home. It may not be true if we are talking about a specific type or restaurant, e.g. a Chinese take-away where most dishes are done in reasonable time in a wok (with some pre-cooking for some ingredients), but various types of dishes that take hours to cook are prepared once per day (or two days). Since I mentioned Chinese, even those have lots of leftovers if they are a buffet-type restaurant. In fact there are several non-profits that try to organise feeding homeless with restaurant leftover donations, it's just not done everywhere and at a large enough scale.
Similarly, supermarkets have to throw away on their "best before" date, even for food types that do not actually spoil around that time. Many people buy them right to the best before day as "reduced price", but a few hours later everything unsold is thrown away.