Stop and think of the long journey your food has taken to get to your table before you choose how to dispose of your leftovers. It may have traveled thousands of miles from far away and exotic parts of the world. It has been raised, processed, shipped, warehoused, distributed locally and brought home from your last trip to the grocery store. That's alot of resources and energy expended for lets say a bunch of bananas! If you put it in the trash chances are it will take another long and fuel consuming journey via garbage truck to a local transfer station, then on to a semi trailer to a distant landfill. Once there it will eventually break down and make methane which is contained as well as water pollution. If you put it down the garbage disposal it goes through an energy consuming process and has possible water pollution affects on the enviroment. Last if you compost it you do save the energy of transporting and or proccessing it, however all of the methane produced is released freely and any toxins from water run off is hard to contain. Either way its one slippery banana peel in more ways than one!

It's definately more environmentally friendly to throw food in the trash.  Food is biodegradable and will decay over time.  If you toss your leftovers down the drain, there's a possibility it could end up getting stuck, and if it doesn't it could cause a degree of pollution depending on where the water ends up in your area.  If you're worried about pollution, you can find biodegradable trash bags in many supermarkets.  As for cans and other things that were used to store food, they should be recycled.

I can't claim to know whether it is better for the environment to throw your food waste in the trash or down the drain, but I would argue that the best way to dispose of your food waste is to compost it! Composting food waste allows your food to break down into a mineral and nutrient rich soil supplement that is wonderful for plants-essentially an organic fertilizer. This will also divert a very large portion of your household trash from ending up in the landfill.

If you have a large yard and the resources, there are many compost bins and 'machines' available for order online and at some local gardening shops (you can also make one out of trash bins, following the basic instructions below). If you live in a small apartment like I do it is actually very easy to creat your own compost bin that can sit under your sink or in your closet. The process is simple:

1) Take two 2-liter bottles (like a pop bottle). Cut the bottom off of one, just above the ridged area it sits on. Drill or poke holes into the cap of this bottle. Cut the other bottle in half.

2) Turn bottle #1 (the one you cut the bottom off of) upside down and place it in the bottom half of bottle #2. Take the top half of bottle #2 and put it onto of the upside-down bottle to make a lid. You can poke holes in the top half as well to allow air flow.

3) Fill your composter about 1/3 with dirt, and if you are daring and it has just rained, a couple of earthworms. Then you can begin to fill it with your food scraps (anything but meat and dairy products-these will start to stink very badly)

4) Keep your composter at a good moisture content, about that of a wrung-out sponge. The holes you poked in the lid of bottle #1 will allow nutrient-rich water to trickle down, which is great for feeding your plants. After a couple of weeks you will begin to see your food turning into compost!

For a visual of how to do this project, go here. 

Happy Composting!

As with many things in life, there are not always easy answers to what seem like simple questions. Take for example this one: What is better (more ecological/sustainable) putting food down the drain via a garbage disposal or throwing it in the trash?

The simple answer is neither. In fact, you should compost every scrap of food not suitable for consumption and donate all other foodstuffs.

As I climb down from my high-horse, I realize that 100 percent food composting (albeit simple and advisable) is not yet a reality for every urban and suburban household so back to the question…

Which is the better practice? Well, I’m going to attempt to answer this by running down what actually happens (and in some case could happen) when you dispose of your food.

Let’s begin with simply throwing your food into the garbage. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that food is biodegradable therefore if sent to a landfill it will eventually breakdown no harm, no fowl (pun intended).

It’s a nice idea but after talking to Diane Bickett, Deputy Director at Cuyahoga Solid Waste District, you may want to rethink what happens when throwing something into the trash.

“Landfills are not dumps like they used to be. They are highly engineered facilities with heavy plastic liners to safely contain waste ... They are a giant bath tub and nothing biodegrades in a landfill at least not in our life-times.”

The fact is that no matter how 'biodegradable' something is, once it goes into a landfill it might as well be encased in amber. The rate of decay in an EPA certified landfill is practically zero because it is capped with clay daily preventing light or oxygen from doing what it wants to do.

“There is one archaeologist who researches landfills and he’s digging up newspapers from the 60s … and banana peels that have been there for 20 years,” she says.

Some landfills— including one in Medina—are harvesting methane that is produced from the minimal decomposition for fuel but the bottom line is when you throw food into the trash it’s more like filing it away then it is getting rid of it forever.

So on to sending food down the drain. If you put it down the drain—your food waste goes through a long, intensive and expensive process that ends with it possibly being removed and incinerated.

Richard Connelly, Superintendent of Environmental Services at NEORSD, lays it out,

“Treatment plants operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and treat more than 245 million gallons in Northeast Ohio,” he explains. “There are many types of waste water treatment but basically you have to remove debris and solids and then we use microorganisms to break down organic material and treat it before the water is released back to the lake and rivers.”

The solids (including organic foodstuffs) can in some cases be used much like compost as fertilizer but often after the solids are removed they are incinerated and disposed of rather than re-used. Also, more and more research is being conducted as to what hormones and chemicals in certain food products do to water quality, and preliminary findings don’t bode well for fish life-cycles.

In the landfill it last ‘forever’ but could be used as fuel and down the drain it’s processed but through an expensive process that may still compromise our lake’s water quality.

There are a number of new technologies being explored to lessen our waste problems—with everything from curbside composting removal to new incineration methods.

Hopefully, it will make you think twice before sending dinner down either the drain or in the trash. Small kitchen composters and worm composting containers are easier to maintain than you might think, and are inexpensive.

Like I said, not all answers are easy.