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Comment by drew-y | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't go that far.

> Per the most recent Inventory Report, U.S. landfills released an estimated 109.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) of methane into the atmosphere in 2020; this represents 16.8 percent of the total U.S. anthropogenic methane emissions across all sectors.

https://www.epa.gov/lmop/frequent-questions-about-landfill-g....

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Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW.

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...

Yes, for that reason Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) is pushing hard to divert food waste out of the garbage and get it composted instead: it's supposed to go in with yard waste, not the regular trash. Not sure how successful this is as it counts on people putting things in the correct bin.

Here in the UK you can actually be fined for putting food waste in the regular bin (although that depends on where you live and enforcement is spotty).

There is a program like that in some suburbs of Sydney. We get little green bags for compostable waste. The up take has been ok from what I’ve seen but these are affluent suburbs.

We are now able to do this here in suburban Los Angeles. You can now put your food waste in the bin meant for green waste (lawn clippings)

As a county resident, I also started doing this recently, and I am amazed how much organic waste we were throwing away previously. My regular trash can takes much longer to fill, and I am constantly taking out the little kitchen bin (that was provided by the waste company).

Diverting compostables out of the regular trash stream also makes the regular trash stream not stink. My under counter trash bin can go two weeks easy without stinking up the place. It is mostly plastic that can't be recycled.

Composting is good, but it's heavy and hence energy inefficient if it's transported too far. This goes for almost all waste but the amount of water in compost and the transport distance adds upp. Handling waste and composting as local as possible is important.

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