What you put in your mouth and your fridge could have a rather large impact on climate change. Food!
But just as importantly, what you do with your leftovers can make all the difference.
- Those scraps of food that you throw in the trash end up in landfills. The problem with that is it decomposes without oxygen producing methane.
- Methane is a gas that is nearly 30 times more harmful for the climate than carbon dioxide. It is estimated mixing food with trash like this has more of an impact on our climate than the entire global airline industry. That’s PLANE crazy!
- When food is composted properly, allowing oxygen and moisture to brew up bacteria to break it down, eating up the all carbon filled stuff, it is turned into a rich food for plants! Food that becomes food not waste? Bingo!
- The solution is composting and making sure we take the idea seriously like San Francisco and the city of Seattle by making it a legal requirement, which is happening. In 2022, the whole state of California will have to quit tossing food scraps in the trash and recycle or compost it instead. The move could push the U.S.A. higher in the global composting league — it's currently at almost 40%, compared to Europe’s nearly 60%.
- Even if we only reduce food waste by 50% in the next three decades, research suggests that it would still stop gigatons of carbon dioxide being released — the equivalent of closing down thousands of coal fired power plants.
Our climate is delicately balanced and we are part of the equation as is what we eat and what we do with it! Composting what we do not consume could just make all the difference.