On this episode of Possibly, we’re taking a look at the Great Salt Lake. The lake has been shrinking for years, but it’s also doing something strange- it’s creating more greenhouse gas emissions than people expected.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Today, we’re taking a trip to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, which is the 8th largest salt water lake in the world, but it’s shrinking. And the lake is also doing something strange- it’s creating more greenhouse gas emissions than people expected. Here to explain are Emma Mejia and Hamid Torabzadeh from our Possibly Team.

Emma Mejia: Hello!

Hamid Torabzadeh: How’s it going?

Megan Hall: So how does a lake create greenhouse gas emissions?

Emma Mejia: To help us answer this question, we talked to one of the scientists who worked on this investigation.

Soren Brothers: My name is Soren Brothers. The Allan and Helaine Shiff Curator of Climate Change at the Royal Ontario Museum, and for research I’m a limnologist, so I study lakes.

Hamid Torabzadeh: Soren says it’s important to understand something about the Great Salt Lake-

Soren Brothers: There’s nothing that flows out of it. All of the stuff that flows into that lake has settled on the lake bottom.

Emma Mejia: The Great Salt lake is around 11,000 years old, so there’s a lot of stuff at the bottom!

Megan Hall: Interesting, what exactly is this “stuff”?

Hamid Torabzadeh: There’s all sorts of things, like decaying plants, dead animals, poop from shrimp and flies, and other debris carried in by rivers and wind.

Soren Brothers: You can imagine it’s all this really nice, tasty food for bacteria.

Megan Hall: What does that have to do with greenhouse gas emissions coming out of the lake?

Emma Mejia: When bacteria eat the stuff at the bottom of the lake, they release carbon dioxide, just like you or I do when we break down our food.

Hamid Torabzadeh: And It turns out that when the lake bottom sediments are exposed to air, the bacteria have a much easier time scarfing down that organic muck.  As a result, they release more CO2.

Soren Brothers: When that lake dries up, it’s like you’re just opening it up as a buffet for all these organisms to eat it. And that’s what’s causing that CO2 to come out.

Megan Hall: So, when parts of the Great Salt Lake evaporate, it exposes the bottom of the lake bed to oxygen?

Emma Mejia: Right.

Megan Hall: And then, that oxygen makes it easier for bacteria to eat the organic matter, which releases carbon dioxide?

Hamid Torabzadeh: Exactly. On top of that, there’s also other stuff  at the bottom of the lake which gets exposed as it dries up.

Emma Mejia: Minerals and heavy metals like lead, mercury and arsenic have also settled on the lake floor

Hamid Torabzadeh: Which could be a problem for people’s health if there’s a dust storm.

Emma Mejia: And this is becoming more of an issue as the lake dries up. So far its area has decreased 50% since the mid-1800s.

Megan Hall: What can we do to stop this?

Emma Mejia: Soren says we have to  look into why the lake is drying up in the first place.

Soren Brothers: The big driver is really people consuming water.

Hamid Torabzadeh: Water directed away from the lake for agriculture is one of the main culprits here. 

Emma Mejia: A study found that more than 60% of water from rivers that lead to the lake is taken away. Most of it is used to grow things like hay and alfalfa to feed to cows.

Hamid Torabzadeh: So, legislation that regulates how much water gets taken from these rivers could make a big difference.

Emma Mejia: But, other forces are playing a role too. Global warming, and harder to predict factors like the amount of snowfall in the nearby mountains, are also impacting the size of the lake.

Megan Hall: Is the Great Salt Lake the only place where this is happening?

Emma Mejia: No.  Other lakes around the world are creating greenhouse gas emissions too.

Hamid Torabzadeh: And similar solutions could work. Protecting these bodies of water would help all of the animals and plants that depend on them, and reduce emissions!

Megan Hall: Got it!  Thanks Emma, and Hamid!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Possibly’s founder and the Provost of sustainability at Brown University Stephen Porder recently visited a supermarket chain in France that sells products other stores would have thrown away.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Here’s an interesting approach to food waste- a supermarket chain in France sells products that other stores would have thrown away. Our founder and the provost for sustainability at Brown University Stephen Porder visited one of those markets during a recent trip to Paris. He’s here to tell us more about it.

Megan Hall: Welcome, Stephen.

Stephen Porder: Hey, Megan, great to be back as always.

Megan Hall: So before we talk about the supermarkets in France, will you quickly just remind us why we care about food waste?

Stephen Porder: There are lots of reasons. But since this show is often about climate change, let’s start there. Food production accounts for about 20% of all of our greenhouse gasses, and of all that food we produce, we throw out about a third of it before it ever gets eaten. So all those greenhouse gasses, as well as all the other effects of agriculture, we’re wasting a third of that.

Megan Hall: Tell me about this food waste supermarket chain.

Stephen Porder: So in French, it’s called Nous Anti-Gaspi, Us Against Waste. And basically what they do is they find food that isn’t going rotten, but that would be thrown out for another reason.

Megan Hall: How did you hear about this place?

Stephen Porder: Actually, it was just down the street from where I was staying. There was a produce market, and then there was this thing called Nous Anti-Gaspi. And looked like they had food there. So I looked into it. So I didn’t hear about it. I just stumbled across it. But it turns out there’s a bunch of them in Paris and around France.

Megan Hall: What is it like shopping there? What kind of stuff do they have on the shelves?

Stephen Porder: It’s basically a fully stocked supermarket.

So I’m walking around Nous Anti-Gaspi. Right now I’m in the cheese section.

It’s France, right? So there’s a lot of wine. There’s a lot of incredible cheeses,

There’s a goat cheese with honey, some seven different kinds of fresh mozzarella.

There’s a lot of produce. And then there’s your staples, olive oil or flour or sugar.

Going back here, we have a whole shelves and shelves of organic eggs,

But even stuff like toothbrushes.

Why toothbrushes would be thrown out? I don’t know. But spices…

And I have to say, like the produce is awesome. I was expecting sort of the half rotten tomatoes, you know, that you would pick through and make sauce out of. But in fact, I couldn’t really tell that there was a difference between the chichi organic produce place next door and this one, in terms of the quality of the produce. It’s just they didn’t have all the things.

Megan Hall: What is wrong with these things that they would have been thrown away?

Stephen Porder: Obviously, when you think of food waste, you’re like, oh, you know, this is past its expiration date or something like that. But when I looked into it, it turns out there’s all kinds of reasons why food gets thrown away.

It was packaged wrong, or there was a typo on the label, or it was delivered too late, and so the vendor had the right to refuse the delivery…

And so all of that is like jettisoned somewhere.

Megan Hall: What lessons could this supermarket teach us here in the US?

Stephen Porder: There are apps and whatnot, and organizations that try to deal with food waste here in the US. And my experience is that there are certain sort of dedicated environmental types who will buy ugly food and go out of their way to to a special a Co-Op, but this very much had the feel of like everybody was there and they weren’t there because they were necessarily environmentalists. They were there because it was cheaper and it was just as convenient. I don’t know. It just really struck a chord with me how regular it felt while doing something that was clearly like it just makes a ton of sense.

Megan Hall: Excellent. Well, Merci Stephen for coming in today.

Stephen Porder:  Je t’en prie

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

The post What can we learn from France about food waste? appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Today, we’re revisiting food waste. As we’ve said in some of our other episodes, the best way to tackle food waste is to prevent it in the first place. But, when it does come time to toss your kitchen scraps, where should they go?

We had Fatima Husain and Ashley Junger from our Possibly Team look into this. 

Fatima Husain: Hi, Megan! 

Ashley Junger: Hello! 

Megan Hall: So, Fatima, to start us off – where do our food scraps go when we toss them? 

Fatima Husain: After scraping your plate or the cutting board, your food can end up in one of three places: your trash bin, the sink disposal, or in compost. 

Ashley Junger: And each of these destinations are associated with different environmental impacts, like releasing greenhouse gases such as methane. 

Megan Hall: We’ve spoken a bit about methane before on Possibly – can you remind us how it’s associated with food waste? 

Fatima Husain: Of course, To do that, let’s think about landfills – the place where food ends up if you put it in the trash. After about a few weeks at the dump, that food gets buried and is no longer exposed to open air. 

Ashley Junger: And when that happens, microbes break down that buried food into methane, a greenhouse gas which, in the short term, warms the planet 80 times more than carbon dioxide does. 

Megan Hall: Got it. So, food waste in landfills eventually ends up as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? 

Fatima Husain: Yes, though at some landfills, some of that gas is collected and used for energy. In Rhode Island, for example, landfill gas from the Central Landfill is captured and converted to electricity. 

Ashley Junger: In 2023, there were nearly 500 landfills with landfill gas energy projects in the United States, with about 100 more planned or underway. 

Fatima Husain: But even a landfill with methane capture can’t catch all of it. A recent report from the EPA estimated that over sixty percent of methane produced by landfill food waste isn’t captured and still makes it to the atmosphere. 

Megan Hall: Got it. So the trash isn’t a great option. What about sink disposal? 

Ashley Junger: When your scraps go into your sink disposal, they’re shredded up and travel through sewer pipes to your local water treatment plant. 

Fatima Husain: On the way to the plant, microbes can start breaking those shredded scraps down into methane. 

Ashley Junger: And then at the treatment facility, food wastes become part of sewage sludge. Depending on where you live, that sludge can end up in your local landfill, burned, turned into fertilizer, or processed for methane capture. 

Fatima Husain: But just like with landfill gas energy projects, not all wastewater facilities have systems in place to capture methane. In fact, most don’t. 

Ashley Junger: A recent study out of Princeton showed that wastewater treatment plants in the US emit nearly two times more methane than scientists previously thought. It’s about the same amount of methane that landfills produce.

Megan Hall: Wow – so what about composting? 

Fatima Husain: Compared to the methane emissions associated with landfilling or your kitchen sink, compost is by far the best place for your food waste to end up. 

Ashley Junger: During the composting process, microbes interact with food in the presence of air, which contains oxygen. When oxygen’s around, microbes break down food into carbon dioxide, not methane. 

Fatima Husain: More and more cities including New York, Seattle and San Francisco have implemented municipal composting.  

Ashley Junger: And even more have pick-up composting available by third parties. 

Fatima Husain: Of course, if you have a backyard, or even a bin under your sink, you can compost your own food waste, turn it into nutritious soil, and keep heat-trapping methane out of our air.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Fatima and Ashley!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

The post What’s the best way to get rid of my food scraps?  appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Growing, harvesting, and making food creates greenhouse gas emissions. But some foods are responsible for more emissions than others. Red Meat is at the top of the list. 

Lots of people want to reduce their emissions by eating more plants, but changing your eating habits can be hard. 

So today, we’re taking a closer look at one idea of how we can drastically reduce the environmental impact of the meat we eat without actually changing our diets. 

We had Ashley Junger and Fatima Husain from our Possibly Team look into this. 

Ashley Junger: Hi, Megan! 

Fatima Husain: Hello! 

Megan Hall: So, what’s this magical way to keep eating meat AND reduce my greenhouse gas emissions? 

Ashley Junger: It’s called cultivated meat or lab-grown meat. 

Megan Hall: That sounds like something from science fiction. How does it work?

Ashley Junger: Good question. To learn more about cultivated meat and how it’s made, we talked with:

Elliot Swartz: “Elliot Swartz. I’m the Principal Scientist specializing in cultivated meat at the Good Food Institute.” 

Fatima Husain: Elliot says the process of creating cultivated meat starts by taking a small piece from an animal…. 

Elliot Swartz: “Where those cells can be taken back to the lab,  grown in a medium that contains all the nutrients that cells need to survive And they can multiply and create the tissues or cells that we need to form into future cultivated meat products.”

Ashley Junger: The end result is genuine animal meats that have been produced without killing an actual animal.

Megan Hall: Wow. But it sounds like a lot of trouble and expense to get the same thing we could get from a cow. Why bother?

Ashley Junger: According to the USDA, four percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions come from beef production. Cultivated meat could be a way to cut that number while still enjoying our burgers.

Fatima Husain: Depending on how it’s grown, on average, cultivated meat could use about one percent of the land that we need to create the same amount of conventional beef.

Ashley Junger: And scientists predict that cultivated meat could emit just 10% of the greenhouse gasses associated with producing traditional beef. And if labs use renewable energy, that could be as low as 2%.

Megan Hall: Wow, sounds like cultivated meat could solve a lot of problems.

Fatima Husain: Yeah, right now the emphasis is on could. Scientists are only making a small amount of cultivated meat, and these estimates are based on models of industrial-scale production. So we’ll have to wait and see how those numbers hold up.

Megan Hall: Ok, but wouldn’t it be easier to just not eat meat all together?

Ashley Junger: We asked Elliot the same question. He said:

Elliot Swartz: “People have been trying to, you know, tell people not to eat as much meat for many, many years. And so you really struggle to get people to shift their behavior by just telling them what to do, from a moral perspective.” 

Megan Hall: Got it. But, how does it taste? Are meat eaters really going to want to try this stuff? It honestly sounds kind of unappealing. 

Fatima Husain: Some people say it’s a little more uniform than conventional meat and doesn’t have those chewy, fatty bits. But most of the people who’ve reviewed it said it was extremely close to or indistinguishable from the real thing.

Megan Hall: Ok, I’ll give it a try. How can I get some? 

Ashley Junger: Well, It’s still difficult and expensive to make, so right now the supply is only enough for some high-end restaurants.

Fatima Husain: But the industry is growing quickly. Investors have put more than 2 billion dollars into getting cultivated meat products on the market.

Ashley Junger: So only time will tell if cultivated meat companies will be able to compete with conventional meat. 

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Ashley and Fatima!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “askpossibly” 

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.

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