Every City Needs Vancouver's Ban on Food Scraps

Food rotting away in landfills is the second largest source of methane emissions produced by people.* In the U.S., landfills may account for more than 20 percent of anthropogenic methane, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes landfills a significant source of activity related to climate change, since the the greenhouse potential of methane is 21 times that of mere carbon dioxide or higher.

Wasted food is also a waste of space. Some 30 million tons of food waste wind up in U.S. landfills every year. Food scraps account for 18 percent of the waste stream, the second largest category of municipal waste in the nation, just after paper. The most popular national food craze is most definitely the farm-to-table-to-landfill movement.