Food thrown away increases Co2 - What about the Co2 impact of eating it and the resulting methane ?

Question

An article todays states that we throw away one third of our grocery shopping and that is impacting on Co2 levels. Does anyone know what the methane output of one third of our food eaten is? Wouldn't it have the same impact or more?

Answer 1

Try not to get too focussed on 'statistics' like these .. most Reporters have zero scientific education and most 'experts' paraded by the press have their own agendas (mainly, getting their next research grant) .. finally 80% of all statistics are made up on the spot :-)

Of course Methane is 1000 times 'worse' greenhouse gas than Co2, however there is no money in finding ways to stop cows farting and MASSIVE amounts of money available to 'research' human made pollution ..

The world is getting warmer .. whoopee !

It's no so long ago that everyone was worried about the next ice age coming .. go look up 'Thames Freezing Over' and 'Year without a summer' ...

Warm == longer summers, longer growing season, higher food production .. on the other hand cold means living under 200m of ice ...

Answer 2

I think the point is that it takes CO2 to produce the food and packaging, and to transport it to/from the shop. If we were to use the 1/3 we currently throw away, we would therefore reduce by 1/3 the CO2 used for these activities.

I don't think it's saying that the act of throwing the food away itself increases CO2 - decomposing food produces methane anyway.