Zero Waste Day: Your food scraps are heating the climate – here is how to avoid it

The International Day of Zero Waste on 30 March (Zero Waste Day for short) holds different meanings for different people – for some, it is a very high-level formalised event, as it was first designated by the United Nations on the initiative of the First Lady of Türkiye. For others, like the Zero Waste Europe network, it serves as a unique moment for us to come together as a zero waste movement, sharing the work that we have done and continue to do every day to make Europe – and the planet – a fairer, safer, and healthier place, where nothing and no one is disposable. 

This year’s focus was on food waste, and our members had plenty to share. In the Netherlands, Zero Waste Nederland hosted two festivals centred on food waste prevention. In Montenegro, Zero Waste Montenegro marked the day by sharing zero waste recipes that show how kitchen scraps can be given a new purpose.

In Austria, Zero Waste Austria brought food waste education into schools and companies, reaching people of all ages. In Ireland, VOICE Ireland’s PickerPals took food waste lessons into 500+ classrooms. In Slovenia, Ekologi brez meja turned real restaurant experience into practical guidelines for more sustainable kitchens. And in Cyprus, Malta and Portugal, FoodConnect made food donation simple, safe and stigma-free.

The theme resonated deeply with the movement. Food waste specifically is a waste stream that most people have a relationship with, whether they’re zero wasters or not, as most of us have learned in childhood that food should never be wasted. It hurts us deeply when we have to throw food away, like leftovers that were forgotten at the very back of the fridge or a wilted herb that had so much potential when we brought it into our home. 

But one thing is our personal feelings and guilt about wasting food that others could have eaten. There is another, and much more consequential issue at hand, and that is the impact our food waste has on accelerating climate breakdown. 

Your leftovers and the gas nobody talks about

Your food scraps typically leave your house in one of three ways: if you have a home or community composter, you take it into the garden and let nature and science take care of business for you, giving you nutritious compost for your plants. If you don’t compost your food waste, your municipality makes the decision for you – either you throw your peels and scraps in a bag or bin specifically meant for food/bio-waste, or you throw them in the same bag as your leftover, non-recyclable waste.

This small decision, to separately collect food waste or not, has a massive impact. If it’s sent to landfill, organic waste creates methane – a greenhouse gas 80x more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. In regions and countries where incineration is the preferred method for dealing with leftover waste or residuals, the consequences are more related to the health of communities living nearby than to climate.

The good news is that there are much easier, cheaper, and low-tech solutions to avoiding methane in the first place: food waste prevention and separate collection. Combining these two, as many of our members are doing across Europe (a good example is the amazing work done within the #ForkToFarm project), is the ultimate recipe to prevent food from rotting in landfills in the first place.

For the food waste that does end up in a landfill, Member States have an obligation to pretreat residual waste before it is landfilled, ensuring that any scraps left in the stream are treated in a compost-like manner to prevent further decomposition and generation of methane. It sounds like problem solved, right? But the reality, as is the case with so many other EU policies, is that it only works if local operators actually enforce the obligation.

Within boundaries – our new space for discussing the messy and essential work of building a zero waste future

Our new podcast, Within boundaries, released on Zero Waste Day, explores exactly this journey: how the food we waste in our homes, restaurants, or school canteens can be part of a climate solution or a climate issue, depending on the choices made by our representatives. 

In the podcast’s inaugural season, the two hosts, Giulia Lodi and Nanna Bille Cornelsen, ask the everyday questions that people face when confronting their bio-waste bin and the waste system they operate within. In conversation with experts from across Europe, Giulia and Nanna shed light not only on everyday conundrums but also on the big-picture climate consequences in Europe and beyond.

You can listen to Within boundaries here or by clicking the image below.