It’s Time America Stopped Throwing Out Food Waste
Between 1960 and 2020, the amount of food waste ending up in municipal landfills nearly tripled. Buried under dirt and other trash, discarded food generates methane as it decomposes, as do other organic materials such as yard waste and paper. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions resulting from human activity.
Methane doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere as CO2, but its power to cause warming is much greater. “Methane has about 90 times as much warming potential as an equivalent amount of CO2 released in the atmosphere,” says Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona.