Is Food a part of your City’s Climate Action Plan? It Should Be!
If you are not considering food as a part of your city’s Climate Action Plan, you are ignoring a large component of your city’s overall carbon footprint.
Yes, it is harder to measure. Yes, it can be personal to some people (i.e diet). And, yes, it can be harder to convince people (and businesses) to change. But that does not mean that you should ignore the fact that it’s a significant component to your overall footprint.
Food waste alone (and there are other food related carbon emissions) is roughly 8% of our overall greenhouse gas emissions. (source: Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken, page 42)
In addition to Food Waste (which is broken down into Excess Production and Waste Disposal), additional emission sources related to food include our Diet and the Transport Distance.
Did you know:
- 33% of the food grown/produced in the world is wasted? Of that, 1/3 is wasted in our homes (11% of total) (source: Duke – Nicholas School of the Environment)
- 90% of the food wasted in the US ends up in landfills (source: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, starring Anthony Bourdain)
- 51% of our trash that goes to the landfill is compostable (source: National Geographic)
- The methane gas emitted from our landfills is 28-36 times more potent than CO2 (source: EPA)
- A head of lettuce can take up to 25 years to decompose in a landfill (source: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, starring Anthony Bourdain)
- The average American spends $1500 / year on wasted food (source: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, starring Anthony Bourdain)
- Food production is the single biggest cause of de-forestation, the single biggest cause of water extraction, the single biggest cause of habitat loss and biodiversity loss (source: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, starring Anthony Bourdain)
- On average, a meal sourced from conventional sources produces 5-17 times more emissions than a meal sourced ‘locally’ (50 mile radius) (source: Worldwatch)
- A heavy red meat diet produces more than 2 times the amount of CO2 as compared to a vegan diet (source: Green Eatz)
- In the book Drawdown, Reduced Food Waste and Plant Rich Diet represent #3 and #4 in the top 100 solutions to reversing climate change
Is food a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions? You bet!
Many communities have started curbside composting programs (which is great), but that is 1 of 4 components related to food.
The 4 components are:
- Transport Distance / buying Local Food – the distance that food has to travel from farm to table is a significant variable when calculating emissions. Per the stat above, buying local food has about 1/10th the impact of food that is purchased conventionally – food that travels from coast to coast – or even further.
Potential Actions: Educate residents on the significant reduction in emissions when buying ‘local’ food. Provide ‘local’ food options and incentives. Highlight restaurants that have integrated local foods into their menus.
- Diet – this topic can be very personal and I’ve seen it spark some fairly heated debates. Whatever your dietary preferences are, I think that it’s good for people to understand that a heavy red meat diet results in 2 times the amount of emissions compared to a vegan diet.
Potential Actions: Educate residents on the impact of diet such that they can make their own decisions.
- Excess Production due to Waste – certainly some waste is unavoidable. It can be very hard or challenging to use all pieces and parts of the foods that we purchase – melon rinds, carrot tops, banana peels, cauliflower leaves, etc. However, by wasting items that were edible at one time, we are simply required to buy more than what we eat. When we buy more than necessary, the food system is required to produce more than necessary – hence producing more emissions than necessary.
Potential Actions: Educate residents and businesses on the importance of reducing waste. Provide recipes on how to use pieces and parts that we typically throw out.
- Waste Disposal – this is where composting fits in. Certainly we’re trying to minimize waste, but for the waste that we do have, it can either go into the trash or into a composting program (home or curbside). By composting our food waste, we prevent the potent methane gas emissions that will be produced from the rotting food in a landfill.
Potential Actions: Educate residents and businesses on the importance of composting and try to provide incentives to residents and businesses that do compost.
As you can see, food is a fairly significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Even if you don’t act on all 4 components above, it would be a mistake to ignore the footprint resulting from food.
We hope that you find the information on our site helpful and invite you to reach out if you have any further questions or if you are interested in our turnkey Green Community Homeowner Campaign.