Far too much food is just binned if somebody is too full, needs to leave early, or similar, and if food wasn’t wasted, there would not be nearly as large of a hunger crisis. Encouraging the reduction of food waste is great, but I’m wondering whether the inevitable food waste could be collected in special bins and be reprocessed into a mixture of various foods, a bit like recycled plastic almost. This obviously could be bad for those with allergies, and there’s no clear expiry date for such a mixed assortment of food. There is also the trouble of people throwing in non food items, like tissues and plastic wrapping. This is already a big problem in recycling!
An alternative could be to separate food waste into multiple bins (meats, vegetables, nuts, dairy, etc.) that could be individually processed, kind of like how recycling is separated into paper, plastic, and cans. Then, allergens could be separated, vegetarian unfriendly products too, and the reprocessed food would be less of a mix and could be portioned into balanced diets.
Some food waste is already processed to become compost, but I’m wondering whether it’s possible for reprocessed food waste to be edible and eaten over being dumped in landfills?
edit: mmm yep looks like a really good way to catch all sorts of nasty pathogens. Varied expiry dates also sounds pretty bad. Maybe not a good idea. And yeah, it does sound pretty nasty.
there no benifits to this. extreme bacterial contaminations and mold/fungus concerns aside, there is simply too much unprocessed food available that goes unsold and is wasted as a result to ever need to recort to this.
it’s not a ecology issue, there has never been a shortage of “food”. when people say there is a “Shortage of food”, what they mean is there is a shortage of food /given/ to them.
it’s a economic shortage of food. they do not have enough wealth to acquire food and therefore they are not getting any. greed is the reason there is so much food wasted. not at the table, but at the market.
governments should be subsidising the poor and supporting their food needs by taking excess from markets at value, not margin.