Composting is a practice employed by gardeners and farmers in which they replenish and enrich the soil with leftover yard/food waste. In addition to enrich the soil and helping plants grow, composting reduces the emissions of methane. This is due to the fact when left in landfills, organic waste generates methane. By separating out organic waste into compost, a significant amount of methane emissions are reduced. Composting also promotes soil’s water retention, which in turn means there is less water waste.

In 2018, an estimated 2.6 million tons of food was composted, which is the equivalent of one person composting .42 pounds of food per day. However, since composting isn’t part of peoples’ daily routine (everyone has a garbage can, but how many people have a composting bin?), we waste about 1.4 billion tons of food. Americans waste the most food annually at a whopping 80 billion pounds. Our food waste could be significantly reduced if we began implementing a steady routine of composting. Normalizing and standardizing composting would reduce the size of landfills as well as improve the agricultural climate.

Before the COVID pandemic, 35 million Americans had food insecurity. Today,  50 million Americans have food insecurity. With over 80% of food waste coming from households and restaurants, there is such a real difference we could be making to reallocate food waste either to those in need and with food insecurity, or to compost facilities to add to long term improvement.

https://www.rts.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/RTS_Food_Waste_Guide_2021.pdf

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/reducing-impact-wasted-food-feeding-soil-and-composting