Waste

Are you aware of how much food is wasted in your own home? It will probably be more than you think right now. After reading this article, you will know how to run a zero-waste household. What is sustainable Food: Zero Waste Tips. Sustainable Food: Zero Waste Cooking Zero-waste cooking means that you know the food (and other waste) you produce during baking and cooking. Zero-waste cooking is all about getting the best out of each ingredient and not wasting anything. Try it. In a few weeks and you're definitely obsessed with every tiny bit of food you can use in diverse recipes. Don't know where to start? We've put together 20 of the best zero-waste cooking tips to make you a sustainable kitchen professional. Start A Food Scrap Garden Do not run straight to the compost because you can reuse some food products with a food scrap garden. You can re-grow them, so you'll soon have your own sustainable mini food garden. Use every little bit of food you have. Recommended:  Dumpster Diving: Hobby Which Combats Food Waste Compost When You Can If you still have food leftover that you can’t use, composting it. This way, you have an option if you still have some food leftover. Think about what you cannot put in the compost, like cans filled with vegetables, fruits, seeds, grains, beans, tofu, nutshells, pasta, bread, eggshells, coffee grounds, baked goods, and snacks. You can throw these ingredients away without the can. Recommended:  Biodegradable Or Compostable? Let’s Break It Down Invest in the Food Cycler Not everyone can compost. You may not have a garden, or you live in a small apartment. It's a bit on the expensive side, but if you want to compost, but you don't have much space or live very urban, then the Food Cycler FC-50 may be a sustainable solution for you. You throw the food residue into the metal container, which composts it over time. Press the button, and within three to eight hours, you'll get earth in return. Use it for your backyard, your Food Scrap Garden, or as a top layer for your plants. Make What You Can (Instead of Buying) Make what you can, like nut butter and seed-, oat-, and nut-based milk. In a few steps, you can make this at home. You will need your oats, seeds or nuts, a bowl, mason jars, and a nut bag or cheesecloth. But other sustainable things to make at home are deodorant, dog or cat treats, sustainable make-up. Even the coronavirus face masks. A lot of products come with plastic packaging. You can try to make your own cleaning products, like soap, Lysol as baking soda to clean. Recommended:  Sustainable Storing Of Fruit And Food: Life Without Fridge Buy Food in Bulk From Stores Try to buy food in large quantities. Bring your reusable storage container. Make sure you register the tare weight. Read our tips for bulk buying. Invest in Zero-Waste Food Storage If you want to store your food for a long time, it is essential to keep it well. Make sure you have lots of jars, reusable silicone bags, stainless steel, and glass containers so you can create storage. This way, you'll need less plastic and aluminum foil. Freeze Leftover Scraps In You don't have to eat everything right away, so put - what you don't need - in the freezer. This will extend the shelf life of the product. Make Broth or Stew From Leftovers If you have many vegetable scraps left over, consider another sustainable way to make use of the food: make a vegetarian leftover stew or broth. The Zero-Waste Chef has a great recipe to use all your vegetables. Recommended:  Food Which Keeps Your Immune System Running Leftover Prime Rib Roast Beef Stew (about 6 servings): Use the leftover rib bones and meat/fat trimmings from a standing rib roast (a.k.a. "prime rib"). 2-3 rib bones leftover from prime rib any meat scraps/fat trimmings leftover from prime rib 1/2 – 2 c. leftover au jus 1/2 to 1 c. leftover wine (red or white) 7-8 c. water 2 beef bouillon cubes 1 onion 4 medium-sized potatoes 4 carrots 3-6 sprigs of thyme salt, pepper to taste 1/2 c. flour + 1 c. water Feed the Dog or Cat If you have leftovers, which may be useful for animals, you may be able to feed these remains to your cat or dog. Pumpkin, sweet potato, blueberries, apples, strawberries, eggs, and bananas can be healthy in moderation for pets. Recommended:  Coronavirus: From Bat, Pangolin Or Raccoon Dogs Store Food the Right Way You cannot store all foods in the same way. Nuts and seeds should be kept in the refrigerator or freezer. Meat should be held at the bottom of the fridge because of possible leakage. Omega-3 oils and nut and seed meals should be kept in the refrigerator. Eggs should be in the fridge center (not in the door) to maintain their temperature even. Buy Local Food Locally grown food is best for the environment and your health. It tends to have more nutrients, be fresher, and help protect biodiversity in your environment. Little transport ensures a lower CO2 footprint. Visit a local (farmers) market. Buy Organic Food Organic products can lead to less waste. When safely harvested, you can even eat the peel of organic products. Examine the products to be sure which are healthy and safe to eat as a whole. Start a Neighborhood Cooking Co-op Start a co-op with your neighborhood; what a great idea! To avoid food waste, donate or share the meals you have leftover. This way, food is used better. Save Your Almond Pulp When you make almond milk at home, there is sometimes some almond pulp leftover. You can also use them to make your crackers, cookies, hummus, and the like. So, could you not throw it away? Research 'Nose to Tail' Cooking Yuppie Chef says, "nose to tail" cooking (and eating) is a movement to eat varieties of meat parts, even the undesirable ones, to avoid wasting food. Try Canning Canning is relatively easy to store food for a long time. You can freeze the food or store it in a cellar for months. This extends the shelf life. Preserving Your Own Food  Make Jams If you have fruit in your house about to get bad, try making homemade jam out of it. You need to invest a little in pectin to get the desired jam-like consistency. Save Vegetable Stems This looks like "nose to tail" but is called "root to steel." It's about consuming all parts of fruit or vegetables. Use them, for example, in soups, smoothies, juices, or through a puree. Add Food to Your Beauty Routine You are what you eat, so why not use food scraps in your beauty routine? For example, ginger can be used as a treatment against acne; you can use some teas as sustainable facial masks. Make Pesto You can use the tops of vegetables such as radishes, beets, carrots, and turnips by boiling them into a pesto. Zero waste! Don’t forget to add some salt. Before you go! Recommended:  Agrivoltaics: Food, Water, Energy At Its Best Did you find this an interesting article, or do you have a question or remark? Leave a comment below. We try to respond the same day. Like to write about your food waste experience? Send your writing & scribble with a photo to  [email protected] , and we will write an interesting article based on your input.

Remember those scientists who discovered this marvelous little plastic-eating enzyme, better known as PETase? Are those crazy bits capable of literally eating the much dreaded PET-based materials? No? Well, some scientists found and reproduced an enzyme that is capable of eating plastic. There, you are up to speed. PETase As PET’s Worst Nightmare Now those guys are back - and they have gone next level. They discovered another enzyme that they threw together with their original enzyme is an enzyme cocktail that can digest plastic up to six times faster. This new enzyme was found in the same group of bacteria that enjoys hanging around groups of debris in our oceans and landfills. When combined with PETase, it has proven to be even faster in breaking down plastic. A quick refresher. PETase is capable of breaking down polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET, into its core parts. What this means could be groundbreaking - as it allows us to create a closed recycling loop for plastics, effectively reducing plastic pollution and pushing back greenhouse gases associated with PET production. PET is used in pretty much everything around us. It can be found in our drinks bottles, clothes, or carpets, to name a few. And as we discard it, it continues to exist all around us. Plastic does not really break down, or well, does so rather slowly. It takes hundreds of years in a usual setting. This is why PETase is so revolutionary. It can do this job in a matter of days and is extremely low-energy, while it can be produced in a lab setting. So, a triple win. Recommended:  Microplastics In Oceans: Is It Harming Us? Meet MHETase: The Partner In Crime Make that a quadruple win, now that a counterpart has been discovered. The PETase’s partner in crime has been given the equally catchy name MHETase, and when the two are combined, they provide even bigger benefits. By putting them together, the PET breakdown speed is doubled. Pretty good already, but if you go that extra mile and engineer a connection between the two, a so-called ‘super-enzyme’ is created that increases this speed threefold.   One of the lead scientists is Professor John McGeehan from the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, who worked together with his colleague Dr. Gregg Beckham from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. As McGeehan explains, “ Gregg and I were chatting about how PETase attacks the surface of the plastics and MHETase chops things up further, so it seemed natural to see if we could use them together, mimicking what happens in nature." “Our first experiments showed that they did indeed work better together, so we decided to try to physically link them as two Pac-men joined by a piece of string. It took a great deal of work on both sides of the Atlantic. Still, it was worth the effort -- we were delighted to see that our new chimeric enzyme is up to three times faster than the naturally evolved separate enzymes, opening new avenues for further improvements." Cheers To The Enzyme Cocktail   The enzyme cocktail basically digests PET plastic and excrements its ‘building blocks,’ so to speak. These building blocks break down much faster and give rise to a cycle where plastic can be made and re-used in a never-ending loop. This could not just solve the plastic problem; it could also be a major cut in the use of gas and oil. That certainly sounds like something worth their effort. PETase enzymes break down PET molecules into monomeric building blocks. After the researchers’ original work with PETase was published, many heralded it as the next big thing in global plastic pollution while noting that it would not suffice in and of itself. PETase was not fast enough to offer commercial viability to the process. Now that the second enzyme has been added to speed things up, it seems like a major step toward becoming a real solution. Before you go! Recommended:  Solar Panel Recycling: Photovoltaics Rebirth Like to write your article about plastic waste? Send your writing & scribble with a photo to  [email protected] , and we will write an interesting article based on your input.

Four master's students call themselves the Tyre Collective, from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art designed a tire attachment to reduce transport pollution. Plastic particle pollution: caught in action. Plastic Particle Pollution: Tires The tire attachment is a device that captures microplastic particles from tires once they are emitted. The tire attachment, which won the UK James Dyson award, could decrease the harmful pollution by road transport. Tires wear out, but why? Every time a vehicle accelerates, brakes, or turns a corner, the tires wear due to friction with the road. Thousands of small particles end up in the air. In Europe alone, this results in 500,000 tonnes of plastic tire particles. Worldwide, it is estimated that tire wear is responsible for almost half of the particulate emissions from road transport. After pollution in the ocean, this is the worst microplastic pollutant. The winning tool is placed on the wheel and uses electrostatics to gather the emitted particles using air currents around a rotating wheel. The prototype collected 60 percent of all tire particles floating in the air in a controlled environment on a trial installation. Recommended:  Unique In The World: Roads Turn Into Electricity A Passion For The Environment The four master's students (Siobhan Anderson, Hanson Cheng, M Deepak Mallya, and Hugo Richardson) said they have a passion for the environment. They use design to have a significant impact on society. "As a team, our strength lies in our diversity," said Hugo Richardson. We all come from different places globally and have a great deal of knowledge in architecture, biomechanics, product design, and mechanical engineering. Caught In Action "Normally, tires wear down, but nobody thinks about where it goes." The students were shocked to find out that tire pollution is the worst kind after ocean pollution. At the Tyre Collective, they look at capture tire wear at the source. They recycle the particles and reuse them for new tires or other materials. For example, they printed business cards using ink made of the captured tire dust. They want to create a closed-loop system. {youtube}                                         The Tyre Collective - capturing micro-plastic pollution from tire wear A recent study by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research has shown that more than 200,000 tonnes of small plastic particles are pumped from the roads into the oceans every year. The problem may get more severe if the UK increases the use of electric cars. They are heavier than comparable diesel or petrol models. So, more electric vehicles mean more wear on tires. Before you go! Recommended:  Solar Panel Recycling: Photovoltaics Rebirth Did you find this an interesting article, or do you have a question or remark? Leave a comment below. We try to respond the same day. Like to write your article about recycling? Send your writing & scribble with a photo to  [email protected] , and we will write an interesting article based on your input.

In our modern world, there is one thing that we certainly do not lack. Asphalt, everywhere we look. Roads, highways, parking lots - it is everywhere. ‘Asphalt’ has become the synonymous term for everything grey, mass-built, enormous, and ominous at the same time. Now, there is one company looking to repair this somewhat damaged image of asphalt - by recycling old tar Asphalt and turning it into useful building materials, heat, and electricity. Unique In The World:  100% Recycling A 100% recycling process is unique in and of itself. Pretty much all recycling processes do leave some kind of waste behind. Not this one, as designed by the Dutch company Recycling Kombinatie REKO BV. Back in 2018, construction began on its second thermal cleaning installation (REKO II-plant) in the Rotterdam port area. This cleaning installation is slated to convert up to 1.2 million tonnes of residual materials, which is a mix of tar-bearing asphalt, and roofing felt. Instead, will be turned into primary resources, including sand, gravel, electricity, and heat. 'The REKO crew'. To build a 'machine' this big you need courage, imagination, and the right decision taking! REKO is a producer of sand, gravel, and fillers for mineral-based residuals (urban mining). Asphalt is its main resource and therefore invaluable in its value chain. This asphalt is largely sourced from road construction projects and can no longer be used due to its tar-holding contents, something that is forbidden in construction. It can, however, still be used for its mineral residuals. At the start of the 21st century, REKO BV worked hard on a brand new, highly innovative process, meant as a thermal cleaning of these mineral residuals. Eventually, this research project paid off and led to the very first thermal cleaning installation for Tar Asphalt, built back in 2006 (REKO I-plant). Ever since this installation has had no problems converting up to 600,000 tonnes of mineral residuals per year. This means that over its lifetime, the installation has produced nearly 7,5 million tonnes of sand and gravel for the Dutch building industry. Recommended:  Waste: The Netherlands Creates New Material From Sewage Burning Up Damaging Components The process is fascinating. The asphalt is thermally cleaned in a rotating kiln, at temperatures of 1000 degrees Celsius. This means that all the damaging organic components in the asphalt - including tar - fully burn up. Eventually, this thermal cleaning process leads to clean sand, gravel, and filler, ready for its second life in the construction industry. The other product of this process is the extremely hot waste gas, that allows for a re-capture of energy in the form of steam with the use of a steam boiler, that is subsequently converted to electricity in a steam turbine. Inside the 'tube' - the rotating kiln - where the asphalt is thermally cleaned Each year, the existing installation (REKO I) produces some 30,000 megawatts of electricity - the rough equivalent of the amount of power used by 7,500 households on an annual basis. A significant amount, but it could be even more efficient. This is what the new installation (REKO II) in the Port of Rotterdam is cut out to do. It uses more modern techniques, while also benefiting from the 12+ years of experience that REKO now gained in the field of thermal cleaning. Not only does it use less energy, but it also generates more: it can generate sufficient electricity to power at least 50,000 households for a year. A significant improvement over the previous version that is. Recommended:  Circular-Economy Gets Game-Changer Ioniqua: PET Poster Child Of The Circular Economy This processing technique is the poster child of the circular economy, where residual materials are fully converted, and the chain is genuinely closed. No waste of any kind, only clean sand and gravel and energy and heat. It merely takes the polluting tar-bearing asphalt and processes it in a way that all the polluting and dangerous components are destroyed. That is what REKO does and hopes to do for a much larger market. In the past, only the Netherlands explicitly ruled that tar-bearing asphalt could no longer be used in construction. By now, Belgium has followed, and the rest of Europe is not far behind. This development in the international market makes the new installation even more attractive. Because of the size of the installation, combined with the large-scale reclaiming of the released energy, REKO can decrease the costs to it's customers   According to David Heijkoop, director at REKO: “ Because of the size of our installation, combined with the large-scale reclaiming of the released energy, we can decrease the costs to our customers. Combined with the very favorable location of REKO in the Port of Rotterdam, in a region where is a great lack of sand and gravel which is normally imported from Belgium and Germany – and the possibility that we can transport tar-bearing asphalt over water -, gives us an excellent starting point for the rest of Europe ." World’s Largest Recycling Factory The new installation is set to become the world’s largest recycling factory for polluted building materials. And while you might correctly assume that the burning of the asphalt requires quite a bit of energy, the materials that burn - including the forbidden tar - release up to four or five times more power than that goes in. Plus, the new installation has the added feature of providing heat as well as electricity. This heat can be transported as hot water to the district heating in the surrounding area. A nice extra is that there is a choice between the amount of electricity and heat generated: meaning, if the city of Rotterdam requires more heat, REKO can deliver this. If it is not needed, for instance, during hot summer months, then it can all be converted into electricity. Once again, a genius move that many will benefit from. To check the whole process of the world’s largest recycling factory you need a state to the art control room! The installation does, therefore, not only serve the company by producing the sand, gravel, and filler that it sells but also the environment and the surrounding area—triple win. “ REKO can produce about one and a half million tonnes of clean sand and gravel. This also means that a lot less sand and gravel has to be dug up, which means that the landscape will be impacted much less—finally, nothing of what REKO processes have to be disposed of. None of the harmful elements will end up in the environment—another good thing for the landscape and nature. Ships will no longer be transporting imported sand and gravel that has been dug up in other countries. Instead, they will bring tar-bearing asphalt that we will convert into clean sand and gravel, which can be put to good use in the Dutch construction industry. It is the circular economy. ” If everything goes according to plan, the installation is set to become operational in a few months, by September 2020. Then it will start to turn old tar containing roads into new building materials, electricity, and heat - without any harmful emissions or residuals. Now that’s the kind of thinking that we need to save the world. Before you go! Recommended:  Solar Panel Recycling: Photovoltaics Rebirth Did you find this an interesting article, or do you have a question or remark? Leave a comment below. We try to respond the same day. Like to write your article about recycling? Click on  'Register'  or push the button 'Write An Article' on the  'HomePage.'

Dumpster diving. The term alone is guaranteed to put a smile on your face - whether it is one of actual enjoyment or disbelief, I am not sure.  Dumpster Diving: Food Perfectly Good Thrown Away Yet this phenomenon, where people sometimes quite literally ‘dive’ in the dumpsters in their neighborhood to hunt for thrown-away treasures, is seeing an uptake after some of its most famous proponents recently made headlines again. When was the dumpster invented? The word "dumpster", first used commercially in 1936, came from the Dempster-Dumpster system of mechanically loading the contents of standardized containers onto garbage trucks, which was patented by Dempster Brothers in 1935. Recommended:  Vegan Food You Need To Develop Your Muscles: Protein Power With the loot varying from hundreds of left-over desserts to household equipment and sometimes even cash, it is not hard to see why some have turned this somewhat peculiar hobby into a way of life. A fact is that we, as the collective world population, are throwing away too many perfectly good things. From food to clothes and from electronics to toys: consumerism has taken a turn for the worse, now that we discard items once we are ‘done’ with them, rather than after they have been used thoroughly. {youtube}                                                    Dumpster diving: free food, free flowers, free fun  Take the issue of food waste. Every year, an average of one-third of the food that is produced in the world for human consumption is wasted. Simply thrown away. I don’t want to risk sounding too condescending, but the old mom-trick is painfully relevant here: "You should eat your dinner, poor children in Africa would kill for it."   And while it is a cliche of the worst kind, it, unfortunately, rings true. While some of us are having the luxury of discarding perfectly good food items, others are starving. The world’s wealth has always been distributed unequally - but so has the food supply. The billions and billions worth of food thrown out in the western world, simply because it is a day past the expiration date, is inexcusable.   Recommended:  Super Food Designed To Match Your Genome: Star Trek Reality Dumpsters? Can you take stuff from it? Is Dumpster Diving Illegal? It is generally considered legal for people to rummage through trash that has been left in a public area such as a curb for pickup. Once the garbage is placed in such a place, the person has basically forfeited their ownership rights to the items, as the property is now in the public domain Dumpster Diving: 'So Many People Are Struggling To Get By' Coming back to dumpster diving. A lot of people are claiming that they are doing it as a way of showing their outrage with consumerism and waste. Others just say that it is fun and addictive. There’s this Dutch guy, Theo Vreugdenhill, who claims that he merely tries to ' save perfectly good food from the trash.'  As he says, “I simply cannot stand by idly if good food is thrown away, only because there is a tiny dent in it, happens to be slightly damaged, or is nearing its expiration date. Especially when I look around and see how many people are struggling to get by. ” He is not doing it for himself, quite the contrary. He is a preacher in a local church and takes two full crates with him to service on Sunday, for those who are unable to provide in their own needs. The products that he finds? Quite diverse, actually: from cheese to beer, butter, yogurt, fruit drinks, feta cheese, salads, and fruit. Although he has also come across perfectly good vacuum cleaners and laptops in the past, which just goes to show how careless we are in what we throw away. Not everything can be found in the dumpster: most divers will agree that it is mostly perishable items, such as vegetables, fruit, and bread. So you probably should not entirely be ready to give up the day job and spent your days as a full-time dumpster diver: products like rice, peanut butter, soda, dish soap, and detergent are pretty hard to come by.   Would you still want to try and find your inner dumpster diver and fill your fridge with leftovers? Then you can quite literally take the dive and plunge in the bins headfirst, although you could also try to talk to some shop owners yourself. Especially if your good cause stretches beyond feeding your immediate family, they might be very willing to hold on to that day’s excess for you and hand it to you in a bag instead of making you scour for it. What is a freegan lifestyle? Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food through dumpster diving. The word 'freegan' is a portmanteau of 'free' and 'vegan'. Dumpster Diving. Hints, Shared By Experienced Dumpster Divers: Do not wear your Sunday’s best for the dumpster diving part - while it is not nearly as gross as many people suspect, it is not something that you want to do in your favorite shirt and jeans either. Only go dumpster diving at night, preferably after the shops are closed. This way, you avoid awkward situations with shoppers walking out of the store while you are digging around in the trash. Do not climb any fences or force open gates when dumpster diving. Trespassing is not appreciated nor legal, so stay off private property. Stick to the curb-side. Always clean up after yourself. Leaving behind a mess of torn apart bags and scattered trash is bad taste and will most likely set some bad blood. Be a good neighbor and make sure that the people whose trash you are raiding do not mind. Be open about what it is that you are doing: you might get some funny looks from passerby's, who might even think of you as some homeless person. Talk to people who spotted you and explain what you are doing and what you have found.   Very practical: use a headlight when dumpster diving, so that you can freely use your hands while digging; and make sure to bring plenty of bags and boxes and, preferably, a way of transporting your newfound treasures. Recommended:  Superfood! Murnong Gets Back To Our Plates: Australia Not quite ready to go out and dig in your community’s trash bins yet? Then you can do other things to cut back on your food waste. To actively encourage you to do so, you will be happy to find that there are quite a few apps that remind you to do so and give helpful hints. One of those apps is Too Good To Go , designed explicitly for bargain hunters: businesses can post their leftovers in the app at steep discounts (adding up to at least 50-75%), after which shoppers can come in to collect the relatively fresh food at a great price.   Recommended:  Helpful tools and supplies for Dumpster Divers Combat Food Waste: Apps Another popular app is Olio , which allows you to share food with your local community. Handy if you are going on holiday, for instance. Your leftover food can be listed, along with a preferred pick-up point and pick-up time, and people in your community will be able to take it off your hands.   Unsung kind of does the same as Olio, except that it works with volunteers, in a charitable set-up. After posting your ‘offer,’ one of the Unsung volunteers will come to pick it up and deliver it to a local food bank or homeless shelter. The volunteers are the delivery guys who pick up your food and drop it off with people who need it the most. Finally, Eat Me prevents your food from going bad: it creates a timer for all the food that you have in your fridge. Scan the food as you put it in the refrigerator, after which it will alert you if it is about to go bad. A fun fact: this app was the idea of two teenage girls, who are still involved in the company. Look, I don’t care if you are digging through trashcans or donating your leftovers through one of the apps listed above. The essence remains the same: avoiding a situation where you have to throw away food while someone else in your community might be going hungry. And that is something worth fighting - or dumpster diving - for. By: Metro/Sharai Hoekema Original article in Dutch  Before you go! Recommended:  Getting Healthier By Eating Sustainable Food And Taking Exercise Did you find this an interesting article, or do you have a question or remark? Leave a comment below. We try to respond the same day. Like to write your article about food? Click on  'Register'  or push the button 'Write An Article' on the  'HomePage.'