The numbers are staggering. According to a 2018 report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an offshoot of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the US generates approximately 207 million metric tonnes of organic waste –including food waste, yard and garden waste, paper products, wood other than construction and demolition debris, and pet waste – each year. Of that total, roughly 65 million tonnes are diverted and the other 142 million tonnes end up in landfills.
Across the globe, landfills are the third biggest human-caused source of methane, which is more than 25 times as potent as CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. This methane is mostly created by organic waste in landfills.
Seeing the negative impacts from landfill on surface water, groundwater, soil, air and human health, the EU established strict rules and goals to divert organic waste from landfills in its 1999 Landfill Directive. “The generation of leachate can contaminate groundwater and methane is produced, which is a potent greenhouse gas. In addition, where recyclable waste is landfilled, materials are unnecessarily lost from Europe’s economy,” the EU stated. This means that landfilling is the least preferable option and should be limited to the necessary minimum. As a result, both composting and anaerobic digestion (AD) – and waste incineration for that matter – have become well established over the years as a way to treat organic waste. Collecting systems, public education and processing technology, not forgetting end markets, have matured up until the present day. In the US, comparable bills have been passed only in the last couple of years, giving the European market a head start of about 20 years.