Don't be trashy: Compost it

Compost, it's so hot right now, compost

Food waste is big, big contributor to global warming. Landfills are the second largest human source of methane emissions, and food rotting in landfills is the largest source of these emissions. The gas rotting food emits, methane, has 24 times the impact on the climate as CO2. In the US alone, we send over 50 million tons of food waste to landfills each year. The production of lost or wasted food generates the equivalent of 37 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions annually. The USDA estimates 30-40 percent of our food goes to waste. So what can you do?  

• Buy only what you need – especially when it comes to perishables.
•  Plan ahead before you hit the grocer – having a weekly meal plan goes a long way toward making use of what you have before it goes off or out of date.
• Get creative with leftovers – discover recipes for common leftovers here!
• Store food properly – Guess what? Lots of produce stores longer when NOT in plastic – check out these techniques to help your lettuce last.
• Use your freezer! Save leftovers you don’t want to revisit just yet and discover batch-cooking for fast and waste-free weekday meals.
• Pack a low-waste lunch – know how much your kiddo needs and don’t overpack. Go even more low-waste a lunch with reusable containers and cutlery (no single use plastic baggies!)

 
And the big one: Compost! If you live in Metro Portland, you can compost all food, including meat, right at your curbside. The benefits of composting are vast. Here’s a list of composting benefits from the EPA:
 

•  Compost reduces, and in some cases eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers.
• Compost promotes higher yields of agricultural crops.
• Compost can help aid reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by improving contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils.
• Compost can be used to remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste in a cost-effective manner.
• Compost can provide cost savings over conventional soil, water and air pollution remediation technologies, where applicable.
• Compost enhances water retention in soils.
• Compost provides carbon sequestration.

 
Don’t be trashy: #compostit