You Waste, You Pay

I grew up with two brothers, one of whom carried a toddler-esque pickiness into adulthood. It's probably no surprise, then, that the word "wasteful" was mentioned toward at least one of us following almost every meal. Granted, we never heard the classic "Think of the starving children..." line, but wasting food and water in our house was a cardinal sin.

All kidding aside, food and water waste is a global issue of epic portions (too soon?). Most estimates place food waste and loss at around 50%, with the vast majority of retail and post-consumption waste occurring in the developed world. Several global initiatives are taking aggressive measures to combat this waste with varying effectiveness.

(The distinction between loss and waste is an important one and is not easily agreed upon. The UN says loss occurs before retail and consumption, while waste is food discarded during or after sale and consumption. The US EPA and EU roughly follow this distinction, although they each set their own equally confusing definitions of waste.)

One of the higher profile initiatives is South Korea's Food Waste Zero. Struggling with rising food waste numbers due to a booming economy, in 2013 the capital of Seoul implemented a "pay-as-you-waste" program. The city now requires residents to separate their food waste and pay for it by weight. Users can choose to be billed using a personal RFID tag and corresponding waste bin, prepaid garbage bags, or bar code stickers placed on standard-sized waste bins. South Korea's efforts appear to be successful: trial programs in Seoul have reduced food and restaurant waste by 30% and 40%, respectively. The Ministry of Environment, the agency that implemented the program, is following suit by charging its employees 500 won (a little less than 50 cents USD) for leaving more than 20 grams of leftover food on their plates in the agency cafeteria.

Europe is working on similar legislation. France passed a law in May banning supermarkets from throwing out unsold food; instead, they're mandated to donate it to local charities or farms. Supermarkets larger than 400 square meters must sign contracts with charities by July 2016 or face fines of up to €75,000 or two years of jail time.

Across the world in California, the more pressing issue of severe water shortages has led to new laws discouraging water waste. Various local governments are issuing reasonable fines for wasting water during the historic drought, while the governor prefers to go for the jugular and fine grievously wasteful individuals $10,000 per day. While the $10K fine will likely never come to pass, it underlines the gravity of the situation.

These efforts look nice on paper, but do they get to the root of the problem? A Taiwanese article about the South Korean program described a housewife straining garbage to reduce the weight-based fines, which ultimately benefits her family's budget but misses the point as to reducing waste. And on the California front, CR4ers and others have recently concluded that the state's drought is more a factor of wasteful infrastructure and management, not individuals.

Whether these efforts are ultimately successful, discussion and awareness around waste reduction seems positive. Maybe some enterprising CR4er could whip up a nagging mother alarm for my own trash can.

Image credit: US National Archives & Records Administration / Public domain