Here are some reasons not to burn food, and some solutions.
To burn food waste is to burn soil in the making.
And, no soil = no us.
Burning food to make energy is a tragic mistake.
Burning food to make energy is not sustainable because:
that’s burning soil in the making ie contradicts the saying, ‘Feed the soil, feed the world’;
depending on the technology about a quarter to a third of the food burnt is lost as waste heat - see the diagram below and stages 3, 4, 5
depending on the source for it, bioenergy produces by-products which go to trade waste - as shown in the diagram.
• When food is burnt about a third of it is lost as waste energy, trade waste, and the transport involved increases our climate emergency
Imagine if, say, a third of a city’s waste food was burnt.
That’s a third of the soil on which that city depends, and of Earth’s limited amount of soil lost – forever.
The idea that there is an endless supply of soil is wrong there isn’t.
Let’s put aside the endless building of cities over farmland everywhere and look at what’s happening across Earth.
• If you want to know why burning food waste is a terminal action, and enjoy terrific writing about soil and how our lives depend on it, read Dirt, the erosion of civilisations by David R Montgomery - fascinating.
After listing the many civilizations which collapsed because they destroyed soil and in a masterful and beautifully written survey of data, research and different practices, in one of the top three or four books about soil, David R Montgomery writes in Dirt, the erosion of civilizations:
“While the world’s population keeps growing, the amount of productive farmland began declining in the 1970s, and the supply of cheap fossil fuels used to make synthetic fertilizers will run out later this century. Unless more immediate disasters do us in, how we address the twin problems of soil degradation and accelerated erosion will eventually determine the fate of modern civilization . . . modern society risks repeating the mistakes that hastened the demise of past civilizations.”
(Another wonderful book is, For the love of soil by Nicole Masters.)
There’s a useful website about bioenergy created by a research unit in the Uni of Southern Qld, here.
Some of the bioenergy sources listed in the pull-down menu on that website are better burnt because they keep animal waste out of soil, water ways, etc eg pig manure, offal from meat works, animal paunch, and such difficult-to-recycle products.
As Professor Ian Lowe wrote in The Conversation when reviewing Michael Moore’s film, Planet of the humans:
"2. Biomass energy does more harm than good
While the film unfairly criticises the environmental benefits of solar energy, it’s true that some so-called clean technologies are not green at all.
As the film asserts, destroying forests for biomass energy does more harm than good – due to loss of habitat, damage to water systems, and the time taken for some forests to recover from the removal of wood.
Most advocates of cleaner energy systems recognise the limitations of biomass as an energy source."
The research article cited by Lowe in his article says of burning ‘biomass’:
“6. Sustainability criteria
Commercial biomass can be used to provide heat and electricity as well as liquid biofuels and biogas for transport. However, without structural changes to the energy system, the production of biomass energy crops and removal of biomass residues from forest and agricultural systems for energy production can result in negative environmental, economic, or social impact. Moreover, unsustainable biomass production would erode the climate-related environmental advantage of bioenergy. In addition, there are risks related to such factors as supply, fuel quality, and price increases, as well as issues such as competition for land area and the degree of renewability of given assets. Sustainability decreases such risks, and can be supported by certification of substrates’ origin (Skambracks, 2007). Taken as a whole, it’s more important than ever to reliably demonstrate that the advantages of biofuels made from biomass exceed the cost of potential environmental damage caused by their production. Therefore, sustainable production of biomass for use as fuels is the major issue in order to increase bioenergy production.”
Burning food for energy is a serious strategic issue around Earth’s cities as local, state and federal governments are working out how to end food waste.
If they mostly choose to burn food waste to make energy there goes the soil upon which our food depends, taking us with it.
There are plenty of proven, workable and cheaper solutions for turning food waste back into soil.
In my next blog on this topic I’ll explore some of these solutions. There’s some very exciting, simple solutions to be found.
In the meantime, each week we’re composting over 300 kg of food waste in our Chippendale road gardens using low cost, low technology and readily available options and the link shows some of them.
Michael