| | | | | A customer grills beef at a restaurant in Seoul. (Jean Chung for The Washington Post) | | Welcome. This week, red sprites and frozen poppy seeds. But first, how South Korea captures 98 percent of its food waste. I'll be back with a new column next week. |  | | Today, South Korea recycles 98 percent of its food waste. Twenty years ago, the situation was precisely the opposite: 98 percent was thrown away. What happened? Washington Post reporters Andrew Jeong and Julie Yoon in Seoul investigated how the country manages to turn almost all its organic waste into feed, compost or energy, according to the South Korean Ministry of Environment. By contrast, the United States sends 60 percent of food waste to landfills. "It's one of the biggest — and dumbest — environmental problems we have today," Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that evaluates climate solutions, told The Post. The trick, it turns out, is a combination of technology, habit, economics and necessity. With 52 million people living in a country the size of Indiana, no distant landfills existed to send their garbage — and no one wanted to live near smelly waste. So food recycling has become a part of daily life. A combination of fees, electronic waste bins that weigh food waste and charges based on how much is thrown out has helped transform the nation's waste stream. But it's not a panacea. The centralized waste stream makes it hard to ensure nothing in it could harm livestock. Excess sodium makes it challenging to apply to fields as fertilizer. So, much is turned to biogas to generate electricity and heat. (You can read more about South Korea's food waste solutions here.) Would it work in the United States? We'll need something different. "The reality is that [America's] low cost of land and relatively low population density, leading to high transportation costs, makes any national-scale waste standards really hard to imagine," says Jonathan Krones, an associate professor of engineering at Brandeis University. In the United States, the best solutions tend to be closer to home: reduce waste before it hits the bin and find ways to turn it into soil in your own backyard (or community). Read my columns on food rescue apps, easy compost and solar digesters here. Write me at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. |  | Learning Curve Which season is warming fastest in your city? Around the globe, winters are warming faster than summers on average. But everywhere is different. Some are anomalies like "warming holes" in places such as the upper Great Plains. The Post's Harry Stevens used data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service to see how cities around the globe are changing — and to allow you to look up your own. Read more here. |  |  | Snapshot Have you seen a sprite? Sprite chasers are now trying to document the fleeting phenomenon, first caught on camera in 1989. The beautiful red flashes occur after electricity discharges above clouds during thunderstorms send free electrons careening into nitrogen molecules. This sets off a chain reaction triggering the ethereal red streaks in the mesosphere as high as 55 miles. The phenomenon is catching the attention of researchers. A NASA citizen science project called Spritacular (pronounced sprite-tacular) began collecting sprite observations from the public. Hundreds of volunteers have contributed around 200 reports since 2022. | | A NASA citizen science project is collecting sprite observations from the public. (NASA) | | Read more about these meteorological fairies, and how you can catch one, by The Post's Kasha Patel. |  | The Second Degree Last week, I wrote about how I fed my family with food that was bound for the trash. Many of you wrote in about your delicious, and sometimes overripe, experiences with food rescue apps. But several asked: Wouldn't this food go to food pantries? Some, such as freshly prepared food, is not easily donated. At least one person who worked with food pantries warned the apps' arrival was taking a bite out of donation streams. I asked Flashfood and Too Good To Go respond. Both say most of their food is either freshly prepared or not available in large enough quantities to donate. "Our goal is to reduce the amount of food sent to landfill and make fresh food more affordable to shoppers," said Flashfood's Esther Cohen, adding partner stores still threw away 73 percent of surplus food. "We fit into an ecosystem that includes food banks and other anti-hunger solutions." What do you do with the food once it arrives at home? Robyn of Fairbanks, Alaska, lives at the end of the national food supply chain. "By the time produce has finished traveling all the way here, it's already about to go bad," she writes. So she's had to learn to either freeze, can or preserve food that isn't eaten right away. "The best solution, in my mind, is to grow and buy locally," she advises. Leslie Lavender, a volunteer at a food pantry, has become an expert at preserving produce. After the pantry recently gave out as many ripe Roma tomatoes as it could, she turned about 75 of them destined for the dumpster into future meals. "I took them home and this is what I ended up with!" writes Lavender. |  | On the Climate Front From The Post: Americans tapped $8 billion in tax credits on home energy upgrades. Glacial floodwaters from Suicide Basin inundated Juneau, Alaska. Experts warn it will probably get worse. Over a billion birds die after striking U.S. buildings each year — maybe many more. There's a striking mismatch between the emoji options on our phones and the diversity of life on Earth. Here's what's missing. From elsewhere: Environmentalists are suing us out of addressing climate change, says an op-ed in The Hill. An intact poppy seed buried under two miles of glaciers shows Greenland was almost entirely ice-free, an ominous precedent, says YaleEnvironment360. 'It shouldn't be a bucket list place': After visiting Antarctica, these scientists and artists are hoping you don't, writes the Guardian. CNN finds a chainsaw amnesty is protecting the rainforest in Borneo. |  | | Naps are essential, and my dog, Miska, never misses one. Here she is after a long day, dreaming of chasing her friends on the beach. Send me your photos and stories at climatecoach@washpost.com | | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Climate Coach in your inbox every Tuesday. See you next Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | | | | |
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