So yeah. I kind of just took for granted what was being said by the greener people than I am, that our uneaten scraps of food were, like so much other stuff, contributing to the detriment of the environment. I could not reconcile in my own head, however (what little time I did spend thinking on it) why tossing leftovers into our own compost bins is an eco-friendly thing to do, but having it hauled away by others to rot elsewhere was an entirely different and bad thing.
Well, consider me educatated now via EcoWatch.org:
"Rotting food in the landfill releases methane, a green house gas which contributes to global warming. Methane traps 23 times as much heat in the atmosphere as the same amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and the release of methane from landfills accounts for 34 percent of all methane emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."I guess even organic trash can be bad news. Which would explain why the composters are forever tossing and fluffing about in their piles, letting in the oxygen that keeps it rotting in a better way. Okay, makes sense now why keeping so much from being dumped is a good thing.
What is the best way, of course, to not have to deal with so much food thrown away in the first place is to quit doing it so much. I'm seriously amazed since I've started hanging on to what I used to just toss out, not enough to keep, actually turns out to be an awful lot to use up.
Sure, that is a fine green thing to do, and a right way to think of it, but you would be surprised also how much less food you need to buy to make it through the week. I know that now.
Only fairly recently have I started storing away what little of this or that I have left over, just to see how things added up and if I could remake something out of what I'd normally just chuck. Interesting what you can do with garbage.