By increasing its goals over the years, San Francisco has been diverting more than 80 percent of waste from landfills since 2012. In 1996 San Francisco established a large-scale composting program, and by 2000 it was able to divert 50 percent of its waste from landfills. There have been many composting success stories around the country, one notable example being San Francisco. However, states, cities, and individual businesses and vendors can spearhead zero-waste strategies to increase composting and recycling rates within their jurisdictions and to keep waste from being generated in the first place. Although most modern landfills have methane capture systems, these do not capture all of the gas landfills are the third-largest source of human-generated methane emissions in the United States.īecause our solid waste infrastructure was designed around landfilling, only about 6 percent of food waste gets composted. This biogas is roughly 50 percent methane and 50 percent carbon dioxide, both of which are potent greenhouse gases, with methane being 28 to 36 times more effective than CO 2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a century. During anaerobic decomposition, biogas is created as a by-product. The waste then ends up undergoing anaerobic decomposition, being broken down by organisms that can live without free-flowing oxygen. When compostable waste goes to a landfill, it gets buried under massive amounts of other trash, cutting off a regular supply of oxygen for the decomposers. Typically when organic matter decomposes, it undergoes aerobic decomposition, meaning that it’s broken down by microorganisms that require oxygen. Composting at home allows us to divert some of that waste from landfills and turn it into something practical for our yards. With the United States generating more than 267 million tons of municipal waste in 2017 and sending two-thirds of that to landfills and incinerators, we spent billions of dollars on waste management. The average cost to landfill municipal solid waste in the United States was around $55 per ton in 2019. Not only is food waste a significant burden on the environment, but processing it is costly. Food scraps and garden waste combined make up more than 28 percent of what we throw away. Composting is a great way to recycle the organic waste we generate at home.
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