With the start of a new year comes the opportunity for New Year’s resolutions. As I reflect back on the holiday season and all of the celebrations, gatherings and family meals, I’m also thinking about all the waste generated — much of which ends up in landfills.
Once there, some trash accumulates for decades without breaking down, while organic waste like food scraps decomposes without oxygen and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is warming our world, making extreme weather more likely, and putting our children’s health and futures at risk.
Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions from human activities, and food waste alone, because it decays so quickly, is responsible for 58% of emissions that escape through areas with inadequate ground cover, around pipes and through leaking equipment. As methane escapes, so do health-harming co-pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone.
Colorado has 82 municipal solid waste landfills, counting both open sites and closed ones, since closed landfills continue releasing methane for many years after the last load of waste is buried. Together, these landfills emit an estimated 1.3 million tons of carbon‑dioxide‑equivalent (CO2e) every year — the same annual climate pollution as roughly 275,000 gasoline-powered cars.
Protecting our climate is important to Colorado. To meet our statutory climate goals, we must reduce pollution across all sectors, including landfills. To accomplish these reductions, landfills must install fixes such as gas collection and control systems, enclosed flares and proper ground covers to keep methane from escaping.
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While these measures can be costly upfront, they’re actually quite cost effective when measured in dollars per ton of CO2e avoided — and securing a safer planet for our families is priceless.
State regulators are not ignoring this issue. In December, the state passed new rules that require lower emissions thresholds, enclosed flares to reduce methane pollution and investigation of leaks detected through remote monitoring. This is a positive step forward, but there is more work to be done since even the strongest landfill methane rule cannot solve the problem alone.
We all have a role to play in reducing food waste, and individual actions can go a long way. Taking simple steps like planning meals, creating shopping lists before heading to the store, and freezing food when tonight’s leftovers cannot be used tomorrow lessen the amount of methane generated at landfills.
The average American household of four loses $1,500 per year in wasted food. That’s money thrown in the trash while too many families are struggling to put food on the table.
And, we need to think bigger by investing in solutions to prevent food waste at the source. Grocery stores, schools and health care facilities toss huge amounts of uneaten food every day, often because more sustainable alternatives can feel too expensive or complex. Even people who want to implement solutions like composting at home often don’t, due to concerns about cost and convenience.
But Colorado communities are leading the way. Longmont increased its commercial waste diversion rate from 35% to 59% after implementing its Universal Recycling Ordinance. Aspen’s new Organic Waste Ordinance resulted in a nearly 350% increase in food scraps being composted by food establishments in a single year. And the Farmer First Compost Program in Boulder diverts clean food scraps from cafeterias and leaves from municipal drop‑off programs directly to local farms where they’re composted on-site and applied directly to their fields.
As we learn to be better stewards of our resources, we can use saved money to help those in need. However, addressing food insecurity is not just about buying food for others — it’s also about revisiting the resourcefulness of previous generations and consuming and preparing food wisely.
When my daughter was recently married, I found myself in the kitchen with the pastor’s wife, Kristi, who grew up on a farm and helped feed the many workers. Together, we picked meat off roasted chickens for the wedding dinner. Thinking I had done an excellent job, I looked over at Kristi’s plate only to see nothing but a pile of bones. She had managed to extract every last bit of meat. As we talked about food insecurity and landfill methane, she made a point that stuck with me — we need to relearn the art of cooking from scratch and wasting little, carrying forward the resourcefulness of past generations.
As we head into the new year, let’s celebrate abundance without waste by buying only what we need, cooking with care and composting what remains. And when waste inevitably ends up in the landfill, the state methane protections will help curb those emissions. Kristi’s reminder that food is too precious to waste, is not just about a wedding feast — it’s about honoring the gift of food, making wise choices and sharing generously to protect our families, our neighbors and our planet.
Laurie Anderson, of Broomfield, is a Colorado field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force.
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