Food Waste

I recently read that food waste makes up a large (30-40%) chunk of our waste stream locally, and since we have an incinerator here (and food waste is mostly water), that is a bad thing. We are all supposed to compost our food scraps.

We compost (usually), but only about half our food waste is compostable, I would guess. The rest is stuff like meat bones or fats or dairy, etc. Plus, composting comes with several side effects, like occasional fruit fly outbreaks, or an abundance of vermin (or snakes). So I have to wonder how people in urban areas are supposed to effectively compost, because a higher residential density would make those issues worse.

Enter garbage disposals. When you shred up food scraps and send them down the sewer, they are composted in the digesters at the treatment plant. Whats more, the digesters collect the methane gas produced and turn it into electricity to operate the plant. My backyard compost pile just sends that methane in the air, where it becomes a greenhouse gas 23x more powerful than CO2.

Turns out treatment plant operators love garbage disposals, and some communities subsidize the purchase of them for this reason. It is a good source of organic load for the digesters, and comparatively low in pathogens. They are not expensive, so I don't get why more people who are on sewers don't have one?