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Food waste recycling in the USA can reduce climate and nutrient pollution impacts yet risks plastic accumulation in soils
Summary
Turning food scraps into compost instead of dumping them in landfills could dramatically cut climate-warming gases and reduce water pollution — great news for the planet. But there's a catch: because so much food waste comes wrapped in plastic packaging, spreading these composts on farmland could add roughly 20,000 tons of plastic to U.S. soils every year unless packaging is redesigned. Since that plastic can break down into microplastics that may end up in our food and water, smarter packaging will be key to making food waste recycling truly safe and sustainable.
Abstract: Diverting food waste to composting and anaerobic digestion can reduce landfill methane emissions and contribute towards circular bioeconomy, but trade-offs can be incurred from nutrient loading to aquatic ecosystems and contamination from plastic packaging. Here we used mass balance modelling and life cycle assessment to compare the climate, nutrient loading and plastic pollution impacts of current landfill-dominant US food waste management with hypothetical organics recycling scenarios. We estimate that nationwide implementation of organics recycling could reduce the climate impact of US food waste management by 89–99%, and nitrogen and phosphorous loading to downstream waterways by 49–54% and 78–98%, respectively, relative to current landfill-dominant practices. However, land application of food waste-derived composts and digestates would offset <2% of US mineral nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer consumption annually and, without innovations in food packaging design, could discharge ~20,000 t of plastic to US agricultural soils each year. Notes: The OpenLCA simulation results included in the data folder are calculated data derived from custom system processes for management of biowaste by landfilling, AD and composting. These custom system processes were created by Katherine K Porterfield based on flows generated from the R-based mass balance model shared here, and the Ecoinvent Consequential database V.3.10.