Final Draft: Real World Problems

http://pepperdine-graphic.com/food-insecurity-a-hidden-in-plain-sight-community/

I’m sure we have all seen commercials and advertisements that show an evidently malnourished child for the cause of contributing to fighting world hunger. The child depicted is usually, if not always, from a third world country. Not only that, but the cases they show come across as extreme because it shows how frail their bodies are. Americans then get the image in their head that food insecurity is something that only exists in limited areas of the world, and that it must be “hunger” count as an issue. We are notorious for not seeing the faults within our own country. When we are able to see them however, sometimes we say, “well it’s not my problem,” or we just turn the other cheek because we feel as though if we aren’t going through it or know anyone personally, then it has no relevance to our lives. We never take into consideration however how we as individuals, and as a country, are contributing to our own food insecurity issue, and how that is harming our planet environmentally as well.

I should clarify the difference between food insecurity and hunger first. Hunger is described as the body’s response to lack of food whereas food insecurity is the lack of food resources in general. In other words, food insecurity is what leads to the sensation of hunger. It may come off as a surprise, but America has a ridiculous food insecurity issue where roughly 40 million people are dealing with this issue. This should seem absurd since according to the infographic below, about 35 million tons of food is currently wasted in America. I think it’s clear that we need to decrease our food waste, but are all the reasons why completely clear? If not, I will break it down further.

(http://www.theswagusa.com/2017/04/20/10-shocking-food-waste-statistics

Food waste isn’t only a problem for those who are food insecure, but also for the environment. There is an overwhelming amount of energy, money, and environmental resources that go into making the food, transporting, wasting it, then transporting it once again to landfills. With that, there are a lot of greenhouse gases being emitted into the air as a result, and tons of water used in production being wasted as well. The two most harmful gases in this case are carbon dioxide and methane. They are both greenhouse gasses which means they contribute to trapping heat into our atmosphere, which eventually causes climate change. The wasted food that spends time sitting in landfills ends up making up a quarter of all methane emissions in America. People also don’t realize how much freshwater is necessary to produces the amount of food that we do in the U.S. “25% of all freshwater in the U.S. is used to produce food that is thrown away.” There are regions in this country that have little to no access to freshwater right now, not even mention other countries where their water sources are contaminated by trash, toxic minerals, and spoiled waste.  Research done by Amanda D. Cuéllar and Michael E. Webber in 2007 found that about 8,000 trillion Btu was used as a result of food waste alone. To put that into perspective, a clothes dryer spends 20,000 Btu of energy per hour, which is 400 million times less than the energy literally wasted for food waste.

To bring it even more closer to home, it only makes sense to look at the irony of food waste in contrast to food insecurity from our campus. Below shows a Bucknell student made documentary which lets a look inside of the dining facilities from a wasteful point of view.

Video thumbnail for Food Waste at Bucknell: A Documentary
https://mediaspace.bucknell.edu/media/Food+Waste+at+BucknellA+A+Documentary/1_ow4uez66

There are a handful of students on campus who deal with the issue of food insecurity, which they have to do in silence/secret most of the time. Everyone knows how outrageously expensive meal plans at a university are, and people who aren’t able to afford the cost should not have to feel ashamed or unsupported. Unfortunately, Bucknell does not have too many outlets to help students in this position. As of right now, the only secure system in place is a food pantry titled B Eats which has not yet been publicized to the whole student body because of fear of admitting there is a problem in the first place. It is sad that the whole first-year class, and most athletes, have the unlimited access meal plan while others have the lowest one because they simply cannot afford it. People with the unlimited access plan feel comfortable having only a few bites off of their plate because in their mind there is an endless supply. So while there is a large chunk of students wasting food end on end, there is also a chunk who have to skip meals, or eat the cheapest junk food, or have to wait for campus events to finish so they can eat the leftover excess food.

https://gfycat.com/scarceeuphoricballpython

A practical solution to diminishing the effects of this global situation would be for more waste systems to implement more  operating biogas systems. A biogas system essentially turns food and water waste into usable fuel. These systems serve as better alternatives to the fossil fuel system we currently run

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-biogasconverting-waste-to-energy

the most off of because it would decrease the amount of methane and carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. There are only 2,200 systems in the United States today, but is people and waste management corporations pushed for this transition, we could potentially have over 10,000 systems operating as we speak.  It is simply a matter of economics and awareness.  It would be a benefit for the economy since it would create more jobs, for those affected by insecurity, for those who contribute to food waste without giving it a second thought, and ultimately for our environment. 

All in all, food waste affects everyone negatively regardless of if you are the person who is being wasteful or not. We are fully responsible for the detrimental effects of our food waste on our planet, and to each other as human beings. We would rather put our natural resources and environment in danger than take an extra second to be considerate of how much food we decide to throw out in comparison to how much we originally bought or produced. If we preserved the amount of food we wasted in this country, and in the whole world, little to no one would be food insecure and therefore no one would be hungry.  For example, dining services at Bucknell could enforce policies that limit how much food someone is able to take from a specific station each round they go up, or have more people serving the food rather than have it be self serve. It of course is nearly impossible to live in a society where no one wastes, but that does not mean we can’t work harder to provide more outlets to share excess food, preserve what some would consider waste, or have more eco-friendly ways to store/manage waste.

 

 

References

 

https://www.thinkeatsave.org/index.php/be-informed/fast-facts/14-food-waste-campaign/355-environmental-impact-of-food-waste-in-the-us

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf

https://oasisenergy.com/appliances-natural-gas-usage/

https://mediaspace.bucknell.edu/media/Food+Waste+at+BucknellA+A+Documentary/1_ow4uez66

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-biogasconverting-waste-to-energy


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