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waste

5 Ways to Help Reduce Food Waste

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In the past couple of decades, food waste has been identified by a major issue in many countries. According to a study in 2014, the amount of preventable food waste discarded annually in Canada amounted to over $31 billion in losses, with approximately 47% of food waste produced by consumers. 

Food waste food has many environmental, economic and social impacts. For example, when food ends up in the landfill, a greenhouse gas that is 21x more potent than carbon dioxide is produced and enters the atmosphere and it is estimated that these emissions make up 7% of all of the greenhouse gases produced globally. When you waste food that could have been eaten, you are also wasting the natural and human resources that were used to grow, produce, process and transport that food. Therefore, it is important to practice sustainable eating habits to help reduce the effects of food waste. Although there may be larger scale solutions for engineers to design, below are five solutions you could try to incorporate into your lifestyle to help reduce your food waste at home:

  1. Don’t over buy. Keep track of what you’ve bought and used. Check your fridge and cupboards often to remind you of what’s there so you can use your products before the ‘best-before’ dates. 
  2. Eat produce of all shapes and sizes. There have been new produce brands, such as No Name’s ‘Naturally Imperfect’ that sells items that may not appear perfect but have nothing wrong with the taste at a lower cost. This helps eliminate food waste by consuming the misshapen produce that farmers would typically throw away. You can also use ‘imperfect’ foods in products like drinks, jams, hummus, and spreads! 
  3. Plan ahead. Think about what you’re going to cook and how you’ll use the leftovers. If you don’t think you will be able to go through the food in the week, buy it another time!
  4. Food Donation Programs. Sending food to a food donation program can put your surplus of food to good use by helping address food insecurity rather than going to waste. 
  5. Use your freezer. Freezers are a great way to preserve food to eat at a later date! If you don’t think you can use your food in a timely manner, save it for later by using your freezer. 

References: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-reduce-food-wastehttps://changeforclimate.ca/story/the-problem-of-food-waste

Recycling old Batteries into Fertilizer

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In 2019, Canada produced over 1.33 billion metric tonnes of waste, leading every country in the world in the most garbage produced per capita. Included in this collection of waste are potentially harmful products such as batteries and electronic waste (e-waste). While placing a small number of normal alkaline batteries in the trash is not particularly harmful, some batteries including lead-acid, lithium, nickel-cadmium, silver oxide and mercury batteries pose a higher threat due to their deleterious impacts on the environment. Although some cities have hazardous household waste (HHW) programs and provide drop-off options for some consumer batteries, these programs are not available to everyone and are not always used. What if there was another alternative for these metal tubes?

An Australian company, Lithium Australia, has managed to close the loop on the energy-metal cycle as they recover zinc and manganese from used batteries. They have found a way to use the metal dust from batteries to create a micronutrient supplement for plant fertilizers. The company looks to build a circular battery economy and they are focusing on supplying sustainable and ethical materials for battery companies. The type of engineers behind this project are called environmental engineers. Environmental engineers use the principles of engineering, science, and biology to develop sustainable solutions to protect the health of living organisms while improving the quality of the environment. Environmental engineers play a crucial role in a quickly developing society, as they encourage humans to reduce their negative effects on the environment, while providing simple solutions for this to be accomplished. The environmental engineers working with Lithium Australia hope to reduce the carbon footprint of the battery industry, and one such method is by recycling their components into fertilizer!

So far, they are able to convert batteries that are on the smaller end of the scale, such as the ones used in remotes or small appliances. Their technology has found a way to extract the main components of alkaline batteries (zinc and manganese) and turn them into supplements for fertilizer.

Safely and sustainably disposing of alkaline batteries has become a major issue around the globe. However, Lithium Australia has already been carrying out tests on its new product and plans on expanding this testing in the future. We can be hopeful that this innovation will soon find its way to other countries so we have a method to reuse these batteries in a safe and practical manner!

Work Cited

https://interestingengineering.com/old-batteries-can-now-be-recycled-into-fertilizer

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/12/canada-united-states-worlds-biggest-producers-of-waste/39534923/

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/16-002-x/2016001/article/14570-eng.htm