There are many ways to create renewable energy, from the ocean, to the wind, to the sun. On the other hand, there are very few ways to make topsoil, and it takes millions of years to do it at Mother Nature’s pace.
That’s why the trend that began in Florida to overturn the ban on organics from landfills is especially troubling. You may have heard of it. Although it is well known that organic materials create methane gas as they decompose in landfills, and that methane gas is a potent greenhouse gas that has the ability to trap heat in the atmosphere 21 times more effectively than carbon dioxide, landfill companies are opting to put them back in landfills under the misnomer of creating renewable energy.
Jodie Humphries wrote an article titled “The impact of domestic food waste on climate change” which was published in Next Generation Food. In the article, she writes:
The amount of food waste generated in the US is huge. It is the third largest waste stream after paper and yard waste. In 2008, about 12.7 percent of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in America was food scraps. Less than three percent of that 32 million tonnes was recovered and recycled. The rest – 31 million tonnes – was thrown away into landfills or incinerators, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Landfill gas emissions are supposed to be curbed, per an EPA program, through gas collection systems. Although most of the landfills in the U.S. do not have a gas collection system–meaning that methane gas is freely being emitted into the atmosphere, many landfill companies continue operating as before. In some cases, they are attempting to justify the installation of landfill gas management systems by mandating that states like Florida force organic materials into landfills. The consequence is that not only will more methane emissions be released into the atmosphere, but the soil health and production capacity of the surrounding farm land will decline over time. Landfill gas collection systems are the least environmentally-preferred option for managing organic material that is thrown away. It is always better to reduce the amount of food wasted, donate what is excess, or to recycle it into compost before burying its nutrient potential in a landfill.
Why compost before landfilling? Everything that we eat that doesn’t come from the ocean depends on topsoil to grow. As topsoil is used to grow food, it gets depleted of nutrients that we need to lead healthy lives. It is replenished with nutrients by adding compost and hummus to it.
Compost is a moist soil amendment with a sweet, earthy, tabacco-like smell. This resource reduces the amount of water needed to harvest crops, it represses weeds and improves the health of the soil and the plants that grow in it. Think of it a the multivitamin for the ground. Forcing the resource into landfills is a short-sighted approach to energy production. There is nothing “renewable” about this type of energy, because forcing organic material into a landfill diminishes the total organics that can be harvested over time. That makes landfill gas a non-renewable resource. And the recent push to put more organics back into landfills through the reversal of the organics ban in Florida in the name of creating “renewable” energy has put things into a new perspective.
If the world system collapsed tomorrow so that there was no refrigeration, no mechanically-powered transportation and no electricity, would you prefer to have soil to grow your food, or would you prefer to have a pipeline? There are many ways to generate energy, but none of them can grow your food.
The planet needs places like Jepson Prairie Organics in Vacaville, California because that facility made it possible to provide the Northern California region with state of the art resource recovery systems that closely approximate what Mother Nature does at a reasonable cost. The City of Vacaville’s leadership in recycling, their community support and innovation has made it possible for food scraps composting and organics recycling to evolve into a resource for the agricultural community while creating landfill diversion, and preventing the creation of greenhouse gases.
The idea of WASTE ZERO is to make the best and highest use of all resources. Compost is one way to keep the planet turning.
