Green Tip: Black Bananas |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Thursday, 04 June 2009 19:00 |
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If left in a brown paper bag, a banana ripens quickly. So quickly in fact, that the banana is also used to speed up the ripening process of other fruit by simply adding the unripe fruit in the same paper bag as the banana. That’s fine and dandy, but what about over ripe or black bananas and pray tell why save them, you ask? Food waste accounts for a sizable portion of material sent to the landfill. The following are a few statistics from the New York Times. In 1997, in a rare study on food waste in the United States (U.S.), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated that in 1995, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the U.S. was never eaten. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tonnes of food waste each year, which is about 12% of the total waste stream, with all (minus about 2%) of that food waste ending up in landfills. In the United Kingdom (UK), a study revealed that Brits toss away a third (about 6 million tonnes) of the food they purchase (about CDN$15.5 billion), and 30% of the food included uneaten and unopened food. In Canada, it is estimated that Canadians throw out at least 7 to 14 million tonnes of food (at least CDN$3 to 5 billion per year). The problem, however, is not unique to just these countries. Wasted food equates to wasted energy, wasted raw materials and other inputs. So when your Mum told you to eat all your food and not waste because there were people starving else where in the world (usually Africa), she wasn’t far off. Eliminating food waste won’t solve all the problems of world hunger or greenhouse-gas pollution; however, it definitely is a step in the right direction that would require little effort and money. The USDA estimated that recovering just 5% of the food that is wasted could feed 4 million people a day; recovering 25% would feed 20 million people. If this waste were recovered, Canada could prevent the release of about 9 to 15 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (the weight of 76 to 127 CN Towers) and the UK could prevent the release of approximately 18 million tonnes for the UK (the weight of 152 CN Towers). Back to the black bananas, here are a few green solutions to a very mushy problem: http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=recipes+for+black+bananas&meta=&aq=f&oq= Next week, I’ll provide you with another solution to the food waste problem. Stay tuned and remember, in order to conserve food and energy and save money and our environment, plan ahead and buy only what you need and use what you have!...and eat your bananas!!! Posted by Myschka
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| Last Updated on Friday, 05 June 2009 01:18 |
We’ve all done this at one point or another…bought under ripe and/or fresh fruit in anticipation of consuming it, only to find that time passed by rather quickly and the fruit is now well beyond ripe and not close to being palatable without some divine intervention. Take, for example, the common everyday banana that often ends up being black. Don’t toss it out! Take heart, not all is lost yet!
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