Waste pickers collect food waste, help combat climate change
MALABON, Philippines — Marilene Capentes pushes a cart along the streets of Malabon city just north of Manila every morning except Sundays, collecting bags of segregated garbage.
She places the food waste in a designated container so it can be turned to compost at the local recycling facility. The rest of the waste goes into separate containers and the recyclables are later sold.
Capentes, who is 47, said the trash used to be all mixed together — and heavy — until a local environmental nonprofit started asking residents to separate it a few years ago. The Mother Earth Foundation in the Philippines, as a member of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, is trying to prevent food waste from going to landfills, where it emits methane as it breaks down and rots. Methane is an extraordinarily powerful greenhouse gas responsible for about 30% of today’s global warming.
Aaron Favila, Associated Press
Residents place segregated garbage on a cart Feb. 13 on the streets of Malabon, Philippines.
Along Capentes’ route, 50-year-old resident Vilma Mendoza now understands the importance of diverting organic waste from landfills to reduce methane emissions to try to limit future warming.
“If you mixed biodegradable to the nonbiodegradable and throw it in the landfill, our environment will suffer,” she said.
Preventing waste from going into landfills, incinerators or the environment is a proven, affordable climate solution, according to GAIA. The international environmental organization, which advocates for waste reduction, is supporting its members, including waste picker groups around the world, that are working with government officials to set up systems to segregate and collect organic waste and establish facilities to compost it.
This is happening mainly in the Global South where waste pickers are already working in many communities and cities. Millions of people worldwide make a living as waste pickers, collecting, sorting, recycling and selling materials such as plastics, paper, copper and steel.
Aaron Favila, Associated Press
Marilene Capentes pushes her cart of segregated garbage Feb. 13 along the streets of Malabon, Philippines.
The world needs better systems for dealing with waste because existing ways are contributing to climate change, said Kait Siegel, waste sector manager on the methane pollution prevention team at the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. She said organics diversion and treatment is “absolutely” an important way to reduce methane emissions.
“We’ve seen these solutions make a difference in countries around the world,” she said. “We’re all creating organic waste in our day-to-day lives. And that’s something that we can be engaging with, in working towards slowing the pace of climate change.”
There’s more interest in this strategy now because the Global Methane Pledge, launched in November 2021, has pushed countries to take a hard look at their sources of methane. More than 100 countries, including the United States, agreed to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
Methane is more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, but doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long — around 12 years compared with centuries. Many see bringing down methane emissions as a crucial, quick way to curb further warming.
Aaron Favila, Associated Press
A worker pours garbage into a machine Feb. 13 at a recycling facility in Malabon, Philippines.
The largest anthropogenic source is agriculture, closely followed by the energy sector, which includes emissions from coal, oil, natural gas and biofuels, according to the International Energy Agency.
The waste sector is the third largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions worldwide, accounting for about 20% of the total. About 60% of waste in Global South communities is organic, according to GAIA. That’s 130 tons of waste per day in just Malabon city, population 380,000.
At a materials recycling facility in Malabon, organic waste collected from households is turned into compost that goes into a community garden to grow vegetables. Some of the food waste goes into a biodigester that breaks it down to turn it into biogas, which is then used to cook vegetables for waste workers to eat. It’s a complete cycle, said Froilan Grate, executive director of GAIA Asia Pacific. Workers typically each have a route of about 200 households, Grate added.
Aaron Favila, Associated Press
Workers on Feb. 13 harvest vegetables grown with compost from organic waste at a community garden at a recycling facility in Malabon, Philippines.
Grate, who is based in Manila, said there are challenges in establishing such systems in new places. It costs money upfront to set up a facility for composting, residents and officials have to be educated on the importance of separating waste, bins have to be provided for households that can’t afford more than one, and sometimes it’s just not a priority. Unlike recyclables and metals, there isn’t a large market for organic materials so waste workers must be paid for the service they are providing for the system to work.
But Grate is confident these challenges can be overcome. More people are making the connection between reducing methane and addressing climate change, so there is more interest from cities and philanthropic groups that could help with startup costs, he said. And cities are seeing the benefits of sound waste management because it reduces vermin that cause disease, helps ensure cleaner drinking water, gives waste workers a sustainable livelihood and helps the planet, he added.
In the Philippines, cities pay waste workers with the money they save in tipping fees by sending fewer truckloads to landfills.
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One-third of food produced in the US goes to waste. Here’s how that impacts the environmentPolarpx // Shutterstock
There are 900 million acres of farmland in the United States, broken into more than 2 million farms. This accounts for approximately 40% of all acreage in the U.S.
Much of this farmland is used to raise livestock and grow corn and soybeans. But not all of it is used to produce foodstuffs for direct human consumption—a lot of it is used to produce food for livestock. This makes livestock and other animal production farms and facilities ancillary beneficiaries of U.S. farming. Agriculture, food production, and related industries (such as food manufacturing and retailing) were responsible for $1.055 trillion of the United States' gross domestic product in 2020—5% of the overall GDP.
To look at the environmental impact of domestic food waste, OhmConnect cited data from the EPA publication From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste, released in November 2021.
One-third of all food produced annually is unconsumed and simply becomes waste. This also means that the resources used to produce that food in the supply chain—water, pesticides, gas or diesel used for freight and delivery, and energy for refrigeration—are also wasted.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the U.S. wastes between 161 and 335 billion pounds of food per year, equal to anywhere from 492 to 1,032 pounds per person annually. To translate this figure into something most people are aware of and many actively keep track of, this equates to as much as 1,520 calories per person per day wasted, or enough food to feed 150 million people.
Food loss and waste per person increased over the last decade and tripled since 1960. Fruits and vegetables are among the foods that go to waste most often, and the consumption stage—typically at home or in restaurants—is responsible for approximately half of that waste.
Polarpx // ShutterstockThere are 900 million acres of farmland in the United States, broken into more than 2 million farms. This accounts for approximately 40% of all acreage in the U.S.
Much of this farmland is used to raise livestock and grow corn and soybeans. But not all of it is used to produce foodstuffs for direct human consumption—a lot of it is used to produce food for livestock. This makes livestock and other animal production farms and facilities ancillary beneficiaries of U.S. farming. Agriculture, food production, and related industries (such as food manufacturing and retailing) were responsible for $1.055 trillion of the United States' gross domestic product in 2020—5% of the overall GDP.
To look at the environmental impact of domestic food waste, OhmConnect cited data from the EPA publication From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste, released in November 2021.
One-third of all food produced annually is unconsumed and simply becomes waste. This also means that the resources used to produce that food in the supply chain—water, pesticides, gas or diesel used for freight and delivery, and energy for refrigeration—are also wasted.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the U.S. wastes between 161 and 335 billion pounds of food per year, equal to anywhere from 492 to 1,032 pounds per person annually. To translate this figure into something most people are aware of and many actively keep track of, this equates to as much as 1,520 calories per person per day wasted, or enough food to feed 150 million people.
Food loss and waste per person increased over the last decade and tripled since 1960. Fruits and vegetables are among the foods that go to waste most often, and the consumption stage—typically at home or in restaurants—is responsible for approximately half of that waste.
