I. SCIENCE
13 How Composting Can Solve our Methane and Plastic ProblemBack in 1996, one of California’s oldest waste collection companies, Recology, began collecting food scraps from San Francisco’s central market to compost. Now, the company’s green composting bins are ubiquitous on the streets of the city, which has composted more than 2 million tons of food and other waste.
Recology and the city of San Francisco stand out for accepting one of the largest varieties of items for compost, including compostable packaging and almost all types of food scraps. With about one-third of all food in the United States going to waste, composting could and should play a bigger role in municipal waste systems across the country. Recology and the city of San Francisco stand out for accepting one of the largest varieties of items for compost, including compostable packaging and almost all types of food scraps.
Food is the most common component of landfill garbage, making up 24% of all landfill material, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to the obvious social-economic concerns about food security, the massive amount of food and other organic waste in landfills is the third-largest source of human-produced methane emissions in the United States — after the fossil fuel and animal agriculture sectors — making up 14.5% of total methane emissions.
Cutting methane emis
