Uneaten food and discarded scraps are a problem the world over, but one Japanese innovator is turning them into a prize: a fermented pig feed that is nutritionally balanced, easy to store, and eco-friendly, the BBC reported.
Koichi Takahashi, formerly a practicing veterinarian, set out to do his part to save the world by revolutionizing the treatment of food waste. Despite the fact that Japan is short on farmland and imports almost two-thirds of its food, it produces more than 31 million tons of food waste in a year, per the report.
Of that food, a large portion is still safe to eat; it's just unappealing or close to spoiling. Humans don't want it, but it's still perfect for animal feed.
🗣️ What single change would make the biggest dent in your personal food waste?
🔘 Not buying food I don't need 🧐
🔘 Freezing my food before it goes bad 🧊
🔘 Using my leftovers more effectively 🍲
🔘 Composting my food scraps 🌱
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
According to the BBC, Takahashi considered selling food waste directly to farmers, but the appearance of the food and the unpredictable nutritional content were problems for the buyers.
So Takahashi turned to an art that has been practiced in Japan for around 5,000 years and studied since the 19th century: fermentation.
Takahashi and his team developed a fermentation process using lactic acid that resulted in a thick liquid called "ecofeed." After tweaking the recipe, they have made it healthy for pigs and inhospitable to most bacteria due to its low pH. It tastes, Takahashi told the BBC, like sour yogurt.
The product, which can go unrefrigerated for up to 10 days, is an ideal way "to take what might otherwise simply be waste and transform it into something useful, in the process creating new industries," Takahashi said.
Not only does it turn around 44 tons of food waste per day into animal feed and, from there, into more food, but it also creates 70% less heat-trapping gas than importing the same amount of feed from abroad, Takahashi told the BBC.
Plus, food companies love disposing of their scraps this way, as it's cheaper than sending them to be incinerated, a process which would also produce heat-trapping air pollution.
The BBC reported that Takahashi expanded the operation to produce biogas last year, allowing him to accept more types of food waste than before. Now, the facility produces 12,672 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, and as Takahashi said, "Nothing is wasted."
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