Remember the banana peels, apple cores and leftover pizza you recently threw in the garbage? Today, your food waste, and your neighbors’, is emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases as it decomposes in a nearby municipal landfill.
Buried food scraps and yard waste at 51 dumps across Colorado generate an amount of methane equivalent to driving 1 million gasoline-powered cars for a year. About 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a period of 20 years, methane accounts for 11% of global emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere and contributing to more intense and severe weather, wildfires and drought.
