Environmental Impacts From Food Production, Overconsumption And Waste To Landfill
Duncan Stewart
11th September 2025,
My Reflections Following the Techies Go Green Webinar
A great webinar by Techies Go Green on Food waste this morning. Wonderful, inspiring and informative contributions from Carla McSorley & Conor Daly on positive and appropriate solutions that are happening in Ireland and globally for food waste, along with exciting questions and comments from our enlightened business audience.
I learned much by listening and learning from both experts. However, I would like to remind our audience of how precious nutritious and ecologically responsible food is to human health, wellbeing and our very existence, with nearly a billion people globally living in hunger or undernourished and Climate Change impacts to food production and safe water resources accelerating and leading to mass migrations from global regions that are now grievously impacted from extreme weather events.
Damaging Overconsumption
We need to reflect on how damaging over-consumption of food is, especially carbon intensive food, such as beef and dairy products, where on top of this dilemma, such a huge amount ends up being discarded and wasted, and much of it creating exorbitant environmental damage.
Our cattle & sheep-based agriculture also contributes over 60% to the pollution to water quality and eutrification of our river catchments, and likewise, the greatest impact to the unprecedented high rate of plummeting populations of wildlife, insects, pollinators and soil biodiversity.
Food production in Ireland generates a massive 38% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, at a shocking 5-fold the EU and UK average per capita, where practically all of this is beef and dairy products or lamb, which are all very carbon intensive.
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Because of a strong lobby from powerful vested interests, beef barons and the large dairy exporters, Bord Bia, and the IFA and from rural politicians, our Government policy is not leading farmers onto a sustainable path, for fear of push-back.
Most farmers seek to act sustainably to protect nature and reduce their emissions, but their voice is swamped and corrupted by the vested interests.
The Consequences
Warnings from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Climate Change Advisory Council that Ireland now faces up to €26 billion in costs for non-compliance with our mandatory GHG emission reduction targets by 2030.
This is truly devastating! Does our Government expect our taxpayers to pay this cost, while the polluters who cause and profit massively from this abuse go free and continue on their unsustainable course? This will leave Ireland by 2030 with GHG emissions that are double the EU average per capita. Ireland's current GHG emission are about 50% above the EU average per capita.
Practically all EU nations are on track to achieve a 55% reduction by 2030 from their 1990 levels, where Ireland's target is less and Agriculture set to only require a 25% reduction. The target mooted by the European Commission for 2040 is for a 90% reduction in GHG, to enable Europe to achieve zero-GHG emissions by 2050, where the last 10% will likely prove the most difficult target to meet. If we fail to act between now and 2030 with effective new policy measures that stimulate a fundamental transformation of farming practices, along with our Transport, Built Environment, Power generation away from fossil fuel, we are destined to be a complete outlier in Europe.
When we over-consume these carbon intensive products and then waste nearly 800,000 tonnes of food, while most of our food produce we consume is imported, especially fruit and vegetables, which could be produced in Ireland, to replace cattle.
Tackling Food Waste
Food Cloud and Cultivate are achieving incredible levels of success, in diverting safe, non-contaminated food to humans in need across Ireland and globally. But only a proportion of food waste is safe for human consumption, where much of it ends up in other uses, such as in our brown bins where it creates compost for fertilizer that is recycled back as nutrient for farmland and to biogas for energy.
Prevention of food waste is paramount to sustainable living. Diverting food waste to other uses is critically important. But when food waste ends up in landfill, it decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen) to create methane a very potent GHG, which amplifies its global warming potential 84-fold compared to carbon dioxide. Likewise, it creates a cocktail of air pollutants when it ends up in being incinerated, where incineration in Ireland is very inefficient at generating energy, and where 2/3rds ends up as waste heat that should be diverted to District Heating.
When food waste gets mixed in our recycling waste bin, it contaminates the contents of the recyclable waste bin, where all of it then gets diverted to either landfill or incineration. These are issues that we need to seriously consider and reflect on, communicate to our society and businesses, and public sector, and demand effective and expeditious action on by our Government.
Duncan Stewart
