Bloomberg October 14, 2021 11:49AM |CITYLAB|”The Quest to Make Composting as Simple as Trash Collection” “Food waste accounts for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. More U.S. cities are exploring door-to-door compost collection, but it’s not as easy as it might seem” by Linda Poon
The University of Texas-demonstrates best practices with bins for Compost, Recycle and Landfill (Trash). Food waste in America contributes more to global warming than does air travel!
Read Bloomberg.com for all the details
As it goes in America, food waste mostly ends up in the local landfill. Arlington County Virginia’s Erik Grabowsky is trying to reverse this trend. “The county expanded its curbside trash and recycling services last month to begin collecting food scraps.” The soil created from the composting process is later returned to the soil. The county’s 2015 plan targeted diverting “at least 90% of waste away from landfills by 2038.”
Until now Arlington, like the rest of America, has had “between 30% and 40% of the U.S. food supply... never eaten, [contributing] to an estimated 40 million tons each year [In the U.S.]” that ends up in landfills, incinerators or even shipped out-of-state. In landfills, food waste decomposes and in doing so releases natural gas, mostly methane. Methane from this source alone is estimated to contribute to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions which surprisingly is more than that created by aircraft. Methane is 25-times more powerful a greenhouse gas than the more prevalent carbon dioxide.
Other locales have tried unsuccessfully for curbside compost collections in the past. One “major obstacle…[is] having facilities in which” to process the food waste. Another big hurdle is getting public adoption of the process. This is especially difficult in high-rise housing that uses garbage chutes. These challenges limit cost-effectiveness. In total the “Institute for Local Self Reliance and the composting magazine BioCycle counted 148 residential curbside collection programs across 326 communities in 2017, up from 79 programs serving 2.4 million households in 2014.”
“San Francisco is celebrating the 25-year anniversary of one of the U.S.’s oldest curbside composting programs, which has helped the city divert 80% of all waste from landfills. Some of the success can be attributed to incremental steps including a start in 1989 with California’s Integrated Waste Management Act “which required at least a 50% diversion rate from all jurisdictions.” Other areas chose yard trimmings but San Francisco, with little home gardening, “targeted food scraps, first from the commercial sector then from residents.” In addition California has “more full-scale composting facilities than any other state.” “San Francisco made residential composting mandatory…[in]...2009.” Incentives help as the “city’s pay-as-you-throw fee structure, which incentivizes composting. The bigger your trash bin is, the higher your fee.”
Experts point out that the goal should be to reduce “the amount of waste going into all three bins-trash, recycling and compost.” For food waste starting with better “purchasing habits” and using the food you have attacks some root causes for excess food waste. If your locale does not have curbside collection there may be drop-off composting collection sites.