To meet challenging climate targets, COP26 must conclude with strong international commitments to capture and compost food waste, leading campaigners have said today
- Innovative compostable packaging firm TIPA and “Save Our Soil” join forces at COP26 to press developed nations to increase ‘pitiful’ food waste composting rates of just 4.1% in the United States and 18.6% across the European Union, UK and Norway to capture carbon
- “Save our Soil “coordinators Springfield Agri say compostable packaging ‘is an essential tool in the battle to increase yields of food waste, and to meet the “4 in 1000” Paris target to increase organic carbon in our soil by 0.4% each year.
- Both organisations will reemphasize their campaigns at COP26 this week, showcasing a joint mission to put carbon back into the soil by bringing more food waste and compostable packaging to composting facilities.
Joining forces with international compostable packaging developers TIPA, “Save Our Soil” coordinators Springfield Agri are calling on leaders in the developed world to make capturing and composting food waste a priority, in an effort to restore soils and capture harmful carbon from the atmosphere.
Almost one-third of food produced for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tons per year – is either lost or wasted globally. Yet the United States composts just 4.1% of its food waste, and the “EU27+” (including the United Kingdom and Norway) composts just 18.6%.
Springfield Agri and TIPA Corp will work together at COP26 to show that packaging choices in the food industry have a direct impact on maintaining and improving soil quality which plays a vital role in capturing carbon.
Compostable packaging helps to recover food waste, whereas conventional plastic harms food waste collections by contaminating municipal composting processes and leaving microplastics behind in soil.
Microplastics then interact with soil fauna, affecting their health and soil functions, with earthworms having been shown to make their burrows differently when microplastics are present in the soil, affecting their fitness and – in consequence – the condition of the soil.
The composting process returns nutrients – including carbon – back to soil, aiding further food production. If the carbon stored in soil were increased by 0.4%, every year, the rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere could be halted.
With UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing last week that recycling plastic materials “doesn’t work”, Springfield Agri and TIPA say COP26 is also an opportunity to recognise the benefits of composting and compostable packaging as a means to reduce plastic pollution.
Exhibiting to world leaders this week, the partnership will present compostable packaging as a ‘critical tool with a dual purpose’: prolonging the life of food as it is transported to retailers and stored by consumers, and later carrying any waste back to composting.
Daphna Nissenbaum, Co-Founder and CEO of TIPA commented:
“We are proud to exhibit with Springfield Agri at COP26 this week. Our message is simple: meeting carbon targets requires healthy soils and healthy soils require the best possible yield of food waste for composting around the world.
“Compostable packaging can help consumers and governments alike meet this challenge by carrying more food waste into the composting process without contaminating the soil as plastics do. We should be aiming for “net zero food waste”, where all excess food ends up restoring the soils which are so essential for growing more.
“With the Prime Minister announcing that recycling plastic doesn’t work, it’s vital that those at COP26 see the multitude of environmental benefits compostable packaging can offer, not only tackling plastic waste but playing a key role in meeting our climate goals. We look forward to demonstrating the technology in Glasgow, and hope to see strong commitments to food waste collection across the developed world.”
Harry Holden the Farming Lead from Springfield Agri added:
“The focus of COP26 is inevitably on emissions around the globe. Much of the CO2 present in our atmosphere has come from burning fossil fuels but globally 25% has come from agriculture and in the UK 10%.The agricultural emissions have resulted in the depletion of the carbon stored in our soil from an average of 5% down to 0.8%. However this can be reversed by building healthy soils and crops which will draw down this excess CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and put it back in the soil where it came from.
“To meet the ‘4 in 1000’ target to increase carbon in soil by 0.4% year on year, it is critical that food waste yields across the globe are improved. Naturally that needs to start with the developed countries, who have the capability to collect food waste from their many city dwellers.
“It also requires major food brands to shift over to sustainable, compostable packaging so that food waste attached to materials it has been shipped in does not go to landfill or incineration but can be composted. “As European countries and others across the world introduce food waste schemes in the coming months and years, these products will be an essential tool in making collections easier for householders, and increasing the overall amount of food that goes for composting and ultimately returned to the soil to feed natures soil food web.”
- US composting figures taken from Environmental Protection Agency, Reducing the Impact of Wasted Food by Feeding the Soil and Composting, May 2018
- EU27+ composting figures calculated based on estimates by Zero Waste Europe of the potential to capture food waste versus current collection rates. See Biowaste generation in the EU: Current capture levels and future potential, 2020
- For further evidence of composting’s benefit to soil, see Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, ‘The benefits of composting, reusing, and recycling nutrients for agricultural productivity’.
- A typically healthy soil will be teeming with biodiversity and may include a variety of earthworms, 20-30 types of small arachnids, 50-100 species of insects, hundreds of different fungi and thousands of bacteria species. But biodiversity is under threat both from farming practices and plastic pollution[1]. There are up to 23 times more microplastics in soil than in the sea.
- For further information on microplastics’ effect on soil see D. Lin et al, ‘Microplastics negatively affect soil fauna but stimulate microbial activity: insights from a field-based microplastic addition experiment’, Biological Sciences (London: Royal Society), 2 September 2020