Waste Not: PA’s Food Recovery Programs Spare Trash, Expense

Americans put 250 million tons of trash on the curb in 2010; 20 million tons of it went into Pennsylvania's landfills and incinerators. By weight, America's trash is mainly paper and paperboard, 1.25 pounds per person per day, or 28.5% of all municipal solid waste. (Industrial waste, counted separately, runs into billions of tons.) Food waste comes next at 13.9% and then yard trimmings at 13.4%. Fortunately, we now recycle about twice as much paper as we discard, and we compost about as much yard waste as we landfill or burn. In contrast, we compost only 2.8% of food waste.

Organizations around Pennsylvania have noticed this discrepancy and have learned to generate money by keeping food out of the dump.