Preventing Food from Reaching the Landfill (2024)

FAQs

Preventing Food from Reaching the Landfill? ›

Tips for reducing this type of waste include: purchasing small to start, immediately freezing uneaten portions, using leftovers the next day,composting, and utilizing your garbage disposal properly, Please never put food waste in your recycling cart, and challenge yourself to keep it our of the garbage as well.

Rather than throwing away excess food, find ways to manage it more thoughtfully, such as working with groups to ensure that it goes to disadvantaged people, and composting for soil restoration.

But wasted food isn't just a social or humanitarian concern—it's an environmental one. When we waste food, we also waste all the energy and water it takes to grow, harvest, transport, and package it. And if food goes to the landfill and rots, it produces methane—a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide.

Check your fridge often to keep track of what you have and what needs to be used. Eat or freeze items before you need to throw them away. If you have more food on hand than you can use or you need, consider donating your extra supply of packaged foods to a local food pantry or a food drive.

Food waste that is not recycled may be sent to landfill where it rots, causing a huge negative impact on the environment by releasing methane – a harmful greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Some local councils send their non-recyclable waste to be incinerated to create useful energy.

Most vegetables can range from 5 days to 1 month, an apple core or a banana peel will take +1 month. While an orange peel will take +6 months. Pistachio shells are another one that takes a long time, while composting it could take 3+ years.

Who is responsible for food waste? ›

It is the responsibility of all food producers, suppliers, transporter, and consumer to recycle food waste without damaging our environment.

When food is wasted, so too is the land, water, labor, energy, and other inputs that are used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, storing, and disposing of the discarded food.

Composting

Composting is a really good way to ensure organic waste is not finding its way into landfill. Organic waste creates methane when left in landfill sites, by composting methane emissions are significantly reduced.

A lack of oxygen in landfills also impedes organic materials from biodegrading. "There's no oxygen in a landfill, so organic matter like paper, wood, and food scraps are stuck in a limbo state, releasing methane," Kellogg adds.

Along with methane, landfills also produce carbon dioxide and water vapor, and trace amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and non methane organic compounds. These gases can also contribute to climate change and create smog if left uncontrolled.

Impacts include: greenhouse gas emissions of more than 42 coal-fired power plants; enough water and energy to supply more than 50 million homes; the amount of fertilizer used in the U.S. to grow all plant-based foods for U.S. human consumption; and an area of agricultural land equal to California and New York.

Food waste accounts for one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and generates 8% of greenhouse gases annually. With these statistics in place, there is a huge need to reduce this environmental footprint. Become a Climate ChampionStand with us as we tackle the pressing challenges of climate change.