Food waste can be useful in the form of compost
It is estimated that approximately 33 per cent of all food produced globally is lost or wasted in food production and consumption
MUSCAT: With a growing environmentally-conscious public, people across Oman are beginning to view garbage in a new way particularly food waste.
“Food waste is a problem not limited to Oman, it is a worldwide issue,” said Dr. Nadiya Al Saady, Executive Director of the Oman Animal Plant & Genetic Resources Center (OAPGRC) and organiser of the monthly Science Café series.
It is estimated that approximately 33 per cent of all food produced globally is lost or wasted in food production and consumption. This is equivalent to around $1 trillion.
“This amount of waste is clearly unsustainable. But what’s really interesting is we can benefit from food waste by producing compost. And we’re keen to encourage the Omani public as well as local businesses to reflect on how they dispose of food waste and the eco-friendly options available to them,” said Dr. Saady.
The amount of food thrown away is a waste of resources. Consider the energy, water and pack- aging used in food production, transportation and storage. This all goes to waste when we throw away perfectly good food.
Cheese is a good example - feeding and milking cows, cooling and transporting the milk, processing it in to cheese, packing it, getting it to the supermarket, keeping it at the right temperature all the time.
If it then gets thrown away it will most likely end up in a landfill site, where, rather than harmlessly decomposing as many people think, it rots and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
“If people compost, instead of throwing food waste away, it would greatly reduce food waste intake in landfills and the emission of harmful greenhouse gas.
“Everything we compost at home becomes a thriving habitat and nutritious fodder for an entire population of bacteria, bugs, worms and fungi and what they leave behind becomes nourishing fodder for our plants. And the great news, the amount of methane emitted through a wellmanaged compost heap at home is zero,” she said.
From an international perspective, 40 per cent of EU waste is now composted or recycled, with 23 per cent incinerated and 37 per cent placed in landfills.
Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria and Germany send less than 3 per cent of their waste to landfills.
Copenhagen, one of the greenest cities in the world, stopped sending organic waste to landfills as far back as 1990.
“Composting requires very little work and resources and it has a huge positive impact on the environment. It creates excellent new resources and is one of the greenest things you can do for the planet.
“Indeed, if you’re interested in starting a green business with a lot of growth potential, then a composting business might just be the answer. You never know, garbage entrepreneurs could start the next batch of successful start-ups,” Dr. Saady.
Sponsored by Oman LNG and led by a panel of local experts, the Science Café event, held last night, asked why our soils are so degraded and how food waste can be used to make the best microbially active compost to enrich soil and grow nutrient dense food.
Attendees also learned the basics of a controlled aerobic composting process.