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Japan’s small size and mountainous terrain present challenges for food self-sufficiency. The country imports almost two-thirds of its food and three-quarters of its livestock feed. Yet each year, Japan throws out 28.4 million tonnes of food – much of it edible.
This comes with steep environmental and economic costs. Compared to many countries, consumers in Japan pay higher prices for food because so much of it is imported. And they also pay taxes to cover the majority of the 800bn yen (£4.2bn/$5.4bn) the country spends each year on waste incineration. Food makes up about 40% of the rubbish that Japan incinerates, and incineration produces significant air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
As the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Japan has set goals of cutting emissions by 46% by 2030 and becoming fully carbon neutral by 2050. Tackling food wastewill have to be a part of those efforts, Takahashi says.
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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240816-the-japanese-farms-recycling-waste-food
Based and solarpunk pilled.
Well, they do like their natto over there, so I’m confident they can find a way to stomach this.
A unique fermentation method being piloted in Japan transforms edible leftovers and scraps into sustainable feed for pigs.
You might’ve missed a detail.
I recently tried it and thought it was great! I’m a big fan of funky fermented foods though.
That’s pretty cool. They say it produces good pork, I wonder how the pigs feel about it vs other feed.
The county I live in (Northern California) requires that household food waste go into the curbside compost bin, or home compost. They do random checks to make sure you haven’t put any food in the landfill bin and you can get a fine.
It gets turned into compost for landscaping, along with the yard waste, not food though.
That is neat! But since it charges you to put things in, wouldn’t that encourage people to just throw their food in the trash? Or is that discouraged somehow?
In my corner of Japan, they just ask to separate it out and wet it down (presumably to prevent too much getting to hot and causing potential melting/burning). I’m rural enough that I and others around here compost on our own. Some parts of Japan have optional composting. I’m not immediately aware of anywhere that has required separation of and/or compositing of organics.
