Wasted Food, Wasted Energy

Sourced from Warmer Bulletin, 27 August 2010

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States by Amanda D. Cuellar and Michael E. Webber, both of the University of Texas at Austin, uses energy from agriculture, transportation (both from the field to the processor and from the processor to the store), processing, sales, storage, and preparation (home and restaurant) to calculate the amount of energy used in each step.

This work estimates the energy embedded in wasted food annually in the United States. The authors calculated the energy intensity of food production from agriculture, transportation, processing, food sales, storage, and preparation for 2007 as 8080 ± 760 trillion BTU. In 1995 approximately 27 per cent of edible food was wasted.

Synthesizing these food loss figures with their estimate of energy consumption for different food categories and food production steps, while normalizing for different production volumes, shows that 2030 ± 160 trillion BTU of energy were embedded in wasted food in 2007. The energy embedded in wasted food represents approximately two per cent of annual energy consumption in the United States, which is substantial when compared to other energy conservation and production proposals.

References:

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States

Amanda D. Cullar, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, The University of Texas at Austin & Michael E. Webber, Mechanical Engineering, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, The University of Texas at Austin

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2010, 44 (16), pp 6464-6469
DOI: 10.1021/es100310d
Publication Date (Web): July 21, 2010
Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society