Around the world, food waste is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, a major cause of climate change. In the United States alone, up to 40% of the food supply goes uneaten, equivalent to $444 billion in waste per year. Globally, over 1.3 billion tons of food gets wasted annually across the supply chain. Wasted food makes up the largest single category of material being landfilled or incinerated here in the U.S., making up 24% and 22% of municipal solid waste, respectively.

Landfilling this enormous amount of organic waste has a significant, deleterious environmental impact. Food waste decomposing in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas over 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the U.S., releasing the equivalent of emissions from nearly 23.1 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year. The shocking reality is that approximately 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste.