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ENVIRONMENT
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Foul Problems Require Foul Solutions WRITTEN BY MDPN. JOHN EUCLID PARREÑO COLLAGE ART BY MDPN. FRANCIS BALDEMOR
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retty much every single human being on earth would want to puke their insides out after just a mere sight of rotting leftover meat or a whiff of putrid decomposing fruit when passing by a trash can filled with the nastiness of human food waste. It’s a torment for anyone. But, for people like Noknok—a 52-year-old Passinhon who is living at an approximately 20-meter distance away from a dumpsite— living with the sight and stench of decaying food waste every single day is already a part of his lifestyle.
This year, the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2021 Food Waste Index discovered that an estimated 931 million tons of food end up in trash annually. 61.12% of that falls under the household waste category while foodservice and retail sectors ledgers for a further 26.21% and 12.67% respectively. Moreover, based on per capita, the average global household throws away about 74 kilograms of food each year, a figure that is generally similar across country income groups that highlight the cruciality of global awareness and improvement. On top of that, food waste that finds itself dumped in landfills emits a massive amount of methane - a significantly stronger greenhouse gas than the notorious carbon dioxide. The overabundance of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere, becoming a catalyst of global warming and climate change. Picture out how much methane could 931 million tons of food waste could produce. It could potentially turn the world into a giant oven, operated by the same people who live in it but do not seem to care. With the disturbing facts and statistics concerning food waste and its global impact, is there even a
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The DOLPHIN | NOVEMBER 2021
way to help reduce its effects? Will people in the case of Noknok ever breathe the smell of fresh air anytime soon? Luckily, Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Company in Jinan, China, might just have found a promising solution that can halt the seemingly inevitable apocalypse brought upon by food waste—cockroaches. Yes. The same cockroaches you see in your household. The same insect that prompts people to grab a can of insect spray every time one is found crawling in the kitchen cupboard. As ironic as it may sound, cockroaches can devour a lot of food in seconds if they are in huge numbers. The agricultural technology company houses a billion—one followed by nine zeros—cockroaches that munch their way into 50 tons of food scraps every day. That means 50 tons of food waste, found itself being digested in an army of gross insects’ abdomen, rather than in a landfill, where they could rot and warm the earth while at it. The process in this industry is remarkable. Food waste is collected in restaurants and then crushed into a disgusting puree and served to the six-legged customers. The roaches thrive in the warm, humid, and dark environment while being served an eat-all-you-can buffet
