{"id":789866,"date":"2026-07-28T19:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/789866\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:13:11","slug":"recycling-food-waste-is-good-for-the-climate-but-could-add-microplastics-to-soil-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/789866\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling food waste is good for the climate, but could add microplastics to soil, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recycling food waste nationwide would have huge climate benefits, but a new study<\/a> in the journal Nature Food found it could also pollute soil with microplastics if changes aren’t made to food packaging.<\/p>\n

In the United States, about a third<\/a> of food produced is never eaten, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Producing, packaging and disposing the wasted food in landfills is a major contributor to climate change<\/a>, and the EPA has a goal to cut the country\u2019s food waste in half by 2030.<\/p>\n

Some states have already taken steps in this direction. Massachusetts requires<\/a> any business producing more than a half-ton of food waste per week<\/a> to keep it out of landfills or incinerators. Instead, businesses must “recycle” by diverting edible surplus food to charities or food recovery services<\/a>, and sending food waste to compost facilities or anaerobic digesters<\/a> that turn it into energy.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts now diverts about 370,000 tons<\/a> of food waste from landfills per year, and has a goal of 780,000 tons annually by 2030. Vermont goes even further<\/a>, prohibiting all residents and businesses from throwing food scraps and yard waste into household trash or landfills.<\/p>\n

\"SarahSarah Anastasio cleans off a plate in the dining hall in Kimball Hall at the College of the Holy Cross. (Jesse Costa\/WBUR)<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Vermont wanted to know what would happen if similar food waste bans were adopted nationwide. They found that recycling food scraps instead of tossing them in a landfill them could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food waste, cutting the total climate impacts by up to 99%. Nationwide food recycling would also reduce nutrient pollution from landfills that can feed\u00a0toxic\u00a0algal blooms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But, without changes to food packaging, a national food waste ban could\u00a0end up dumping up to 20,000 tons of plastic into farmland each year via contaminated compost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are huge climate benefits to diverting food waste<\/a> away from landfills. And a lot of that benefit is coming from avoiding methane emissions when the food waste breaks down,\u201d said Katherine Porterfield, the lead study author and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vermont.<\/p>\n

But, she said, a lot of plastic food packaging<\/a> gets mixed in with food waste, either by accident or through sloppy sorting. Even with people and machines picking the plastic out of the waste stream, she said,\u200a\u201da small amount sneaks through. And if you’re talking about very, very large amounts of food waste, that can add up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA bin of expired food from area Stop & Shop stores being poured into the anaerobic digester at the Stop & Shop Distribution Center in Freetown. (Jesse Costa\/WBUR)<\/p>\n

Porterfield said that food waste is only one way that microplastics can enter the environment. “Plastics are everywhere,” she said, and can get into soil from the air and water, stormwater runoff, and through plastic mulching used on many farms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear\u200awhether plastics in agricultural soil can end up in food in a significant way. “It’s still something that researchers are trying to understand,\u201d Porterfield said.<\/p>\n

The new study highlights “a real problem,”said Laura Orlando, senior scientist at the nonprofit Just Zero, who was not involved with the research. “Plastic doesn\u2019t belong in compost \u2014 full stop.”<\/p>\n

But, she added, compost made from food waste is not inherently contaminated with plastic; many gardeners, farmers and others are able to use food scraps as an ingredient in high-quality plastic-free compost.<\/p>\n

“An upstream solution is to take plastic out of packaging,” she said.<\/p>\n

There has been growing concern about the contamination of compost with\u00a0PFAS<\/a>, microplastics and other pollutants. In 2022, an organic compost facility was linked to contaminated drinking water<\/a> in Westminster, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

The study authors said their findings should not discourage municipalities from enacting food waste bans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study shows clear benefits to food waste recycling. This is something we need to be doing,\u201d said study senior author Eric Roy, who directs the University of Vermont’s Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability.<\/p>\n

Casella Waste Systems Inc., a major waste management company in the Northeastern U.S., is a financial supporter of the research. Roy said the company had no influence over the study design or results.<\/p>\n

He said that better sorting of food waste, as well as better packaging, could cut down on a lot of plastic waste.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aPackaging is designed to package food, not to be de-packaged,\u201d he said. “Conventional plastics tend not to disappear, but to just break into tinier and tinier fragments over time. So there’s work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recycling food waste nationwide would have huge climate benefits, but a new study in the journal Nature Food…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-789866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}