IMHO

zero waste, or, what happened to the pigs?

Written By: Miranda - Nov• 04•09

A post by Phil Sparks on Mr. McIntyre’s Environmental Science blog,  a response to this article about Nantucket’s trash, led to some interesting reading this morning. In the article I read this on food waste and the benefits of composting.

When apple cores, stale bread and last week’s leftovers go to landfills, they do not return the nutrients they pulled from the soil while growing. What is more, when sealed in landfills without oxygen, organic materials release methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, as they decompose. If composted, however, the food can be broken down and returned to the earth as a nonchemical fertilizer with no methane by-product.

Which got me wondering… What happened to the pigs? When I first started working at KUA we routinely separated our food garbage out when we scraped our plates, that’s why there were two bins. The food waste was picked up by someone who gave it to his pigs. What happens to all that food now? Does it go into the landfill?

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