Staggering Statistic: How Composting Could Slow Global Warming

Next time you get ready to throw out those two-day-old leftovers, consider this: Americans generate 21.5 million tons of food waste each year.

Composting that food instead of just throwing it in the garbage would hugely reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. When food waste sits in a land fill, it rots without oxygen, a process that produces methane gas.

When you compost your food waste, on the other hand, hardly any greenhouse gases are released. Improving soil quality and giving back to the environment is just an added bonus. To put it in perspective, composting would reduce greenhouse gases as much as taking 2 million cars off the road.