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Environmentalists often talk about composting and how great it is, but they don't always mention why it is important to do so. Maybe you wondering: "Well, food is biodegradable, so if I put it in the trash and it ends up at the landfill, it'll just turn into compost there. Why should I compost at home?"
The answer to that question is simple. It has two main aspects:
1. First, organic matter (food, in this case) doesn't always break down in the same way. In a landfill, things get buried quickly and most of the decomposition usually happens in an airless environment; this means anaerobic digestion by bacteria.
This is bad because anaerobic digestion produces biogas that contains carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas (about 21x more effective at trapping heat than CO2). So by throwing away your food scraps, you are actually contributing to global warming more than if you composted them.
2. Secondly, even if food does biodegrade at the landfill, whatever comes out of it won't be useful. Even if it does turn into very good compost, nothing will grow in it, and chances are it will be contaminated by some of the toxic materials that end up at the landfill.
So the benefits of composting at home are that you can reduce the number of greenhouse gases produced, and you end up with useful compost that you can either use in your garden or, if you live in an apartment, give away to someone who has a garden.
