Food Scrap Recovery Policies
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s data on municipal solid waste generation and management, an estimated 52.4 percent of yard trimmings were “grasscycled” or composted in 2018, while only 6.1 percent of food scraps were composted. Policies that ban food scraps from landfills can have a tremendous and immediate effect on diverting organics from the waste stream, while also reducing landfill-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
Composting/Other Food Management
The total MSW composted was 25 million tons. This included approximately 22.3 million tons of yard trimmings (more than a five-fold increase since 1990) and 2.6 million tons of food waste (4.1 percent of generation of wasted food).
Other methods of food management were estimated for the first time in 2018. In 2018, 17.7 million tons of food (28.1 percent of generation of wasted food) was managed through animal feed, co-digestion/anaerobic digestion, bio-based materials/biochemical processing, donation, land application and sewer/wastewater treatment.