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There is a high loss to atmosphere/runoff on burying your food in the soil for recovering it later as available fertilizer nutrients.

newnewpdro 8y ago
There is 100% loss of what's sent to the landfill, while consuming energy to move it there. On my property in particular, runoff is not an issue (desert). From what I've seen there's mostly increased insect activity in the compost area. I view it as more generally increasing the fertility of the area from waste using minimal effort. Most of it is consumed by other lifeforms before I grow anything there. But those lifeforms are residents of my land and will continue to multiply (and die) here. Their increased activity effectively locks up the resources and I can leverage that with a large garden when time permits.
- thatcat 8y ago
  The landfill has CH4 off gassing, which is usually burned and used to power things. It also supports it's own ecology and residents. The transporting of rotting food around is pretty ridiculous though. You might make your distributed practices even more efficient with vermicompost / bokashi; by selecting an organism with known beneficial outputs to metabolize the waste you'll end up with a higher conversion to usable nutrients and beneficial microbes for your plants.
  - benj111 8y ago
    "which is usually burned" Have you got any sources for the usually? Any ex landfill I've seen just has vents to the open air, and mentions of landfill gas never give the impression its mainstream.
    - triangulum 8y ago
      There are plenty of landfill gas capture systems around. Veolia are particularly proud of their so-called "Bio-reactor". These kinds of systems don't work as well as advertised, but if you have a landfill, it's better than nothing. https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-facilities/landfills/woodlawn-bioreactor-facility https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-facilities/landf... But as others have been saying, it makes much more sense to simply bury the food in your garden. Or collect food waste on a municipal level, which has, for example, been the law in Germany since 2015. The "dry fermentation" system used in Munich is a particularly good example. They collect food waste in the city, compost and ferment it in a big sealed hall near the soccer stadium, wait 12 weeks for the bacteria to work, collect the resulting biogas to put into their gas network (or power garbage trucks), and sell the leftover organic compost and fertilisers to local residents and farmers. A closed and sustainable cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0gU9ljHo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0gU9ljHo4 https://www.awm-muenchen.de/fileadmin/PDF-Dokumente/awm/Folder_TFA_2012_englisch_fin_72dpi.pdf https://www.awm-muenchen.de/fileadmin/PDF-Dokumente/awm/Fold...

newnewpdro 8y ago

There is 100% loss of what's sent to the landfill, while consuming energy to move it there. On my property in particular, runoff is not an issue (desert). From what I've seen there's mostly increased insect activity in the compost area. I view it as more generally increasing the fertility of the area from waste using minimal effort. Most of it is consumed by other lifeforms before I grow anything there. But those lifeforms are residents of my land and will continue to multiply (and die) here. Their increased activity effectively locks up the resources and I can leverage that with a large garden when time permits.

thatcat 8y ago
The landfill has CH4 off gassing, which is usually burned and used to power things. It also supports it's own ecology and residents. The transporting of rotting food around is pretty ridiculous though. You might make your distributed practices even more efficient with vermicompost / bokashi; by selecting an organism with known beneficial outputs to metabolize the waste you'll end up with a higher conversion to usable nutrients and beneficial microbes for your plants.
- benj111 8y ago
  "which is usually burned" Have you got any sources for the usually? Any ex landfill I've seen just has vents to the open air, and mentions of landfill gas never give the impression its mainstream.
  - triangulum 8y ago
    There are plenty of landfill gas capture systems around. Veolia are particularly proud of their so-called "Bio-reactor". These kinds of systems don't work as well as advertised, but if you have a landfill, it's better than nothing. https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-facilities/landfills/woodlawn-bioreactor-facility https://www.veolia.com/anz/our-services/our-facilities/landf... But as others have been saying, it makes much more sense to simply bury the food in your garden. Or collect food waste on a municipal level, which has, for example, been the law in Germany since 2015. The "dry fermentation" system used in Munich is a particularly good example. They collect food waste in the city, compost and ferment it in a big sealed hall near the soccer stadium, wait 12 weeks for the bacteria to work, collect the resulting biogas to put into their gas network (or power garbage trucks), and sell the leftover organic compost and fertilisers to local residents and farmers. A closed and sustainable cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0gU9ljHo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0gU9ljHo4 https://www.awm-muenchen.de/fileadmin/PDF-Dokumente/awm/Folder_TFA_2012_englisch_fin_72dpi.pdf https://www.awm-muenchen.de/fileadmin/PDF-Dokumente/awm/Fold...