The Hidden Methane Crisis in America's Landfills
Nearly half of America's landfill capacity is consumed by organic waste, and this buried material silently fuels a greenhouse gas crisis far more potent than CO2.
Organic waste comprises approximately 48% of landfill capacity in the United States, with food waste alone accounting for around 24% (this portion is representative of the 50% of food that we grow that gets thrown away). This massive volume of decomposing material generates and releases methane approximately equivalent to 119 million metric tons of CO2 annually—representing 17.1% of all U.S. emissions. What makes this particularly alarming is methane's potency as a greenhouse gas: it traps heat 84 times more effectively than carbon dioxide.
The Methane Capture Gap
Of the approximately 1,300 active landfills across the United States, only about a third capture their methane emissions. Even those with capture systems operate at roughly 15% efficiency, allowing large volumes of methane to escape into the atmosphere. (If you’d like to see visual evidence of this, carbonmapper.org is a great tool to check out online.)
Barriers to Better Solutions
Given the environmental benefits, why do companies continue sending organic waste to landfills? The answer lies in market dynamics, politics, and corruption that have remained largely unchanged for decades. For instance, many county-level Solid Waste Districts (whose responsibility should include better solutions for solid waste) receive a kickback off every ton of material delivered to their local landfill — which often funds greater than 70% of their staff budgets. Do we honestly expect employees who rely on landfill revenue for their income to work against landfill disposal as the de facto solution?
Landfill disposal is made to be artificially inexpensive because the true environmental costs aren't factored into tipping fees. Additionally, waste hauling in most markets is controlled by landfill companies that have little incentive to divert materials from their incumbent disposal sites.
The Path Forward
The methane crisis lurking in America's landfills demands attention not because the solution is unknown, but because implementing that solution requires coordinated effort across industry boundaries, and leaders/politicians who will back “the right thing” despite the tremendous power of the landfill industry in lobbying circles. Solutions exist for these waste materials — such as composting, digestion, incineration, and reuse — but we have to have the societal and political will to utilize these options, and not just pay lip service to our shared shame of landfilling tens of millions of tons of reusable material across the country every year.