Compost.

If you need a good reason to compost your food waste, Kenneth Weiss provides it an article he wrote for Science magazine in May (Vancouver’s Green Dream, Science 20 May 2016, Vol. 352, Issue 6288, pp. 918-921, DOI: 10.1126/science.352.6288.918).  Weiss describes Vancouver’s efforts to combat climate change, among other environmental initiatives, by capturing methane generated in its landfills with extraction wells. Methane can be 30 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, so rather than allow methane to escape to the atmosphere, Vancouver burns what it collects to generate useful heat.

Then the city discovered that about 40% of the methane generated in its landfills evaded the extraction wells and escaped to the atmosphere. Extraction wells can only capture so much, so Vancouver decided to do what other cities have begun, barring the food wastes and other compostable garbage that generates methane when buried in a landfill.

That meant convincing the city’s population (over 600,000 within the city limits alone) to keep their food wastes and other compostables out of the regular trash and save it for a separate collection. When that separate collection only happened every other week, compliance lagged, but when the frequency increased to weekly, the city experienced a 40% reduction in garbage while compost collections jumped 60%.

It’s coming, folks. We can’t afford to throw food and other recoverable garbage into landfills which not only tosses valuable nutrients out of reach, but also produces dangerous greenhouse emissions. If your town or city collects food scraps for composting, participate in the program. If they don’t, start your own compost bin. It’s not that difficult, and it will combat climate change.