Keeping food waste out of the landfill has big climate benefits, study finds

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Millions of tons of food waste end up in landfills each year. But alternatives like composting, anaerobic digestion and even feeding food waste to animals are much better for the climate, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine and other institutions.

The study, published in the journal Nature Food, found that diverting all food waste away from landfills in the United States would avoid around 10% of the planet-warming carbon emissions that come from the country’s agriculture sector.

“It is really huge,” said Zhengxia Dou, a professor of agricultural systems at Penn Vet who led the study.

The results are a call to action, said Sintana Vergara, an environmental engineer who studies climate change and waste management at Swarthmore College and was not involved in the study.

“We know that there are these very big environmental burdens posed by food waste,” Vergara said. “Here’s this paper saying, look, if we reuse [it], here are all these benefits.”