Reducing waste and recycling leftovers for animal feed

Type de pratique Reuse for feed

Nom de la pratique Reducing waste and recycling leftovers for animal feed

Nom de l’acteur principal Japan government and Agri Gaia System

Type d’acteur(s) Autorités publiques, Société

Pays Japan

Etape de mise en œuvre Consommation, Exploitation

Année de mise en œuvre 2007

Opérations déjà accomplies/en cours Food waste used to be well utilized as animal feed in Japan. However, it has declined due to the introduction of commercial concentrate feed and high performance exotic breeds, a strategy seeking more efficient production, and due to a change in lifestyle. While the food industry’s by-products that do not fluctuate in quality and quantity are being used as a part of dried concentrate feed, or total mixed rations, the quality of most food waste fluctuates considerably and its safety is of concern. Consequently, its use as animal feed is limited and, as a result, wastes have been incinerated and put into landfill. This process induces emissions of GHGs and toxic substances such as dioxin and heavy metals. Each year, Japan food waste totals 20 million tonnes, of which 3 percent is used for fertilizer and 5 percent for feed. Moreover, self-sufficiency of food in Japan is only 40 percent. The very low selfsufficiency of animal feed (only 20 percent) is one of the major reasons for this high percentage and the poorly balanced feed supply makes the livestock sector unsustainable. In order to alleviate the environmental burden of treating food waste and to reduce Japan’s dependency on imported feedstuff, in 2001, the government adopted the Law for Promotion to Recover and Utilize Recyclable Food Resources (so called Food Recycling Law), which was revised in 2007. This provides mandatory recycling targets for food-related businesses (e.g. 85 percent for food manufacturers) and encourages them to reuse their food wastage as raw material for animal feed or fertilizer. The law’s guidelines state: “Since it is the most effective way to utilize the nutrition or calorific value of the recycled food, besides contributing to [Japan’s] self-sufficiency ratio for feed, it is important to make processing feed [from food waste] a priority.” While pig farmers in other parts of the world are being bankrupt by the high cost of animal feed, Japan’s pig farmers are being given a cheap, environmentally- friendly alternative. Businesses are now more aware of the great amount of food they discard, as well as of the economic and environmental advantages of reusing food for feeding purposes. In fact, the cost of recycled animal feed is about 50 percent lower than conventionally produced feed.

Résultats et impacts Inspired by this new law and frustrated with dumping loads of discarded food every day, a former garbage truck driver, started a food recycling company, Agri Gaia System, Japan's largest maker of recycled animal feed. His drivers cart truckloads of rice balls, sandwiches and milk discarded by over 2 thousands 7-Eleven stores to his factory on the outskirts of Tokyo, where the food scraps are turned into dry and liquid animal feed for pigs and chickens. The feed is not used for cattle or sheep because of strict health regulations that were imposed to prevent mad cow disease. Materials not suitable for animal feed are composted or processed into methane gas to be used as supplementary fuel for the mill. The Agri Gaia System plant has a daily processing capacity of 255 tonnes which has only a fraction (oneseventh) of the CO2 emissions of the 200-tonne incineration plant that had burned the food waste.