Farm to Fork to Landfill and . . . to Fuel

Imagine you are a strawberry, growing quietly on a farm. Watch this video as the lowly strawberry moves from farm, to refrigerator, and finally, to a garbage can. In the United States, 40% of the food produced is wasted. (Worldwide food waste is 33%.) Not only that, the 70 million tons of wasted food uses up 21% of our fresh water, 19% of our fertilizer, 18% of our cropland, and 21% of our landfill. 

Every year, as a country, we spend over $220 billion growing, transporting, and processing all the wasted food. If the land cultivated to grow that wasted food in the U.S. were all in one place, it would cover more than 3/4 of California!  

Finally, when food is dumped in a landfill, it rots and becomes a significant source of methane—a potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Growing and transporting the food that goes to waste emits as much carbon pollution as 39 million passenger vehicles! 

Fortunately, many local governments are stepping up to reduce our wasted food footprint. How are they doing this? Since cities control their sanitation systems, they have a lot of control over what happens to discarded food and how they communicate with their citizens about garbage reduction, reuse and recycling. The right kind of food composting systems produce lower emissions than a similar volume of food in a landfill, and they may get useful byproducts from composting. 

Dane County has long been trapping methane and other gases emitted from the heaps of garbage at the landfill to produce electricity, but last year the county began trapping that methane to create and sell compressed natural gas (CNG), a more eco-friendly vehicle fuel than gasoline and diesel. You can read more about that in this Wisconsin State Journal article. The methane in natural gas is a very harmful greenhouse gas when emitted, but when it’s burned in vehicles, it changes into less harmful carbon dioxide and is considered a cleaner fuel source than gasoline. There are also several bio-digesters scattered around the county already targeting bio-waste to use as animal bedding and fertilizer. 

The second strategy targets restaurants and grocery stores. Both provide a huge opportunity to turn food scraps into compost, fertilizer and fuel. They are also integral to the third waste strategy, redistribution of food surplus. While not exactly climate programs, they offer an added bonus: reducing greenhouse gas emissions while helping individuals and families who do not have enough food. Madison’s Healthy Food for All and United Way of Dane County recover prepared foods otherwise destined for the dump. They collect leftover soup, baked goods and other meals from the multiple cafeterias at Epic Systems and the cafeteria at the American Family Insurance campus, food banks and gardens, as described in this Isthmus article.

And your own food waste strategies? Luckily, you don’t have to completely overhaul the way you eat. It’s sometimes as easy as swapping one favorite food for another. Sustainably produced locally grown food often has a lower carbon footprint than industrial food companies, so you can still enjoy your favorite foods if you choose your ingredients wisely. Here are some specific suggestions.  

• Buy less; a full refrigerator is a metaphor for the world food system: 40% wasted food. 

• Scrub your fruits and veggies, don’t peel. Or use household cleaners like baking soda, vinegar and water to wash them.

• Don’t throw away your milk on the expiration date.  

• Learn what food labels mean! 

• Compost.  

Splash photo of wasted produce to be composted by jbloom under license CC BY-ND 2.0.

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This blog is written by LWVDC’s Climate Team. If you receive blog posts by email, our system automatically inserts “by Brook Soltvedt.” Brook is the webmaster, not the author of the blog.