Food wastage affects many households today. However, you can solve this problem by recycling waste food. Here are four ways to achieve this:
Use Waste Food as Animal Feeds
Farm animals such as pigs and hens can consume most of an average household's food waste. Thus, instead of disposing of your food wastes, it's practical to set it aside for animal feeds.
Furthermore, various animal feeds on the market come from food waste. Different food producers have continued to keep the food loop running using smart ways to convert waste food into animal feeds. This way, the meat and dairy industries remain sustainable.
Recycle Waste Food Into Biogas
Biogas is a sustainable energy source created from organic wastes such as fruit and vegetable residue, plant debris and scrap timber. You can also recycle waste food into renewable biogas. Scientists have found ingenious ways to tap all the energy contained in organic wastes. This way, very little ends up in oceans or landfills. Biogas production involves incineration of food waste to provide crude liquid necessary for biofuel generation.
Recycle Food Packaging Materials
Food packaging materials, especially from grocery stores, restaurants and other food outlets, form a significant amount of waste. Food containers and wrappings form a considerable percentage of the waste reaching landfills in Australia. Even though disposing of the food packaging material isn't practical for all food items, recycling them helps minimise their presence in landfills. Consequently, this helps reduce toxic emissions to the environment.
Compost Waste Food From the Kitchen
It may be an odd idea to save trimmings and scrap food from your kitchen. Conventionally, this was known as garbage, but today, there are smart ways to recycle such waste food. Compositing waste food has many benefits that outweigh simple food wastage reduction. Compost enhances soil drainage and water retention properties. Besides, it suppresses weeds and boosts soil nutrient content.
There are various methods to compost waste food. You can choose the 3-bin system or the pit compost method. In the 3-bin system, you have one bin carrying raw kitchen wastes, the second with partially decomposed waste and the third holds fully decomposed material, ready for your garden. In the pit compost system, you only dispose of the waste kitchen scrap in an 8-inch deep pit and wait for it to decompose.
Conclusion
There you have it — food waste recycling can help feed farm animals, as well as boost soil nutrient content. You can also generate biofuel and recycle food packaging into useful products.