How to Help the Environment - Composting

By Jennifer Marquiss

food scraps of shopped veggies on a cutting board being scraped into a bin with compost

Did you know there is a big difference for the environment when you send food scraps to the landfill?

Food waste is a huge issue in the United States, with the US throwing away about 40% of the food it produces.

Considering that agriculture produces about 10% of the US greenhouse gasses every year, to have 40% of that food be thrown out is something that we need to improve. Some of this waste is produced by farms and in the food manufacturing and distribution systems. There is quite a lot consumer waste in American, which is something that you can address directly.

Here are some quick tips on what you can do as a consumer to reduce your food waste:

Plan meals.
Refrigerate and eat your leftovers.
Consider freezing, drying, or otherwise preserving produce that you are not going to eat fresh.
Donate food to a food bank.
Understand best-before dates; they can indicate that the food may not be fresh within 90 days of the date.

But what about the food you do have to throw out?

Even if you have very minimal food waste, there are still going to be organic materials that need to be thrown away.

There are some big problems with sending your food scraps to the landfill that you might not be aware of.

The way the food breaks down in the landfill creates way more greenhouse gasses than if that food was composted.

When food breaks down in a landfill, it is not exposed to oxygen. When this is the case, the action of the food breaking down produces methane gas. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that creates a lot more warming in the environment than CO2.

graphic of garbage truck at the dump with the words "Wasted food causes 58% of methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills."

In 2020, food waste in landfills was responsible for approximately 55 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.

In contrast, when you compost your food waste, that food is broken down in an environment that is exposed to oxygen, so it doesn’t produce nearly the amount of methane into the environment.

When food scraps go to landfills, vital soil nutrients are being lost.

Nature is a master recycler; you see this in a forest. The trees use energy and nutrients from the soil, sun, and water to grow. The leaves they shed still contain vital nutrients. They are broken down into nutrient-dense soil, and the plants can use those nutrients again, over and over.

All of the food that we bring into our homes is packed with nutrients that came from the soil.

If your food scraps go to a landfill, those nutrients are lost to us.

But when you compost, you are doing as nature does. You are breaking down the plants into a rich, nutrient-dense natural fertilizer that can be used to grow more food and revitalize the land.

You also save the need for synthetic fertilizers that require tremendous fossil fuel inputs to produce.

Composting is great for the environment

In addition to the above, composting also improves soil fertility, water retention, and prevents soil erosion.

There have been some very successful city composting programs running in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and newly the entire state of California!

Whatever works best for you, be it creating your compost pile and using your compost to fertilize your garden, using a city offering composting program, or finding a local program to bring your compost to, we hope that you will make the change to your routine to divert your food scraps from the landfill. And better, to help those nutrients return back to the soil to help to grow more nutritious food!

Happy Composting!