Why throw away food when it can be used to make fuel for cars? We thought about this with friends, cleaning the dishes after dinner. Different options are needed in the climate crisis and the urgent search for practical problems, including the food industry. Of course, something may object – why complicate everything if you can just compost organic matter. However, the world needs energy, more electricity, and fuel so as not to stop developing. So why can’t that fuel be a banana peel or a pie that no one ate at dinner tonight?
One of my friends said that he recently read on the news that they make biofuel from ramen in Japan. Then I thought about what the energy production from food could look like on a global scale. Over the past few years, biofuels have become a bone of contention. For some, renewable energy produced from organic matter is a magic wand in the fight against climate change. However, others see biofuels as a real threat because the plants used to make them claim agricultural land and water that could be used to grow food. (Clapp 55) Moreover, a potential price increase for some particular food might be a real problem for such regions as Africa or developing Asia, where hunger is still a common problem.
My friends and I decided that let the food waste go to the compost for now. However, I am confident that biofuels can be universally adopted as one of the best alternatives to conventional fossil fuels with the right policies and technologies. Although the cost of ethanol from sugar is still much higher than traditional kerosene, some airlines are already supporting the trend for biofuels. This means that there is hope that we can achieve carbon neutrality goals using all the resources we have, and the leftover pie is no exception.
Works Cited
Clapp, Jennifer. Food (Resources). 3rd ed., Polity, 2020.