For Bostonians who participate, it’s possible to separate food waste from other household garbage and have it picked up and made into compost. The curbside pickup program was launched in May 2022 as a key component of Boston’s goal of diverting at least 80 percent of the city’s waste from landfills and municipal incinerators by 2035.
As the Globe recently editorialized, Massachusetts needs to get more organic waste out of the trash stream because we are running out of landfill space and because food waste is the largest source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in landfills. The problem is that Boston’s composting program is far from universal. And that makes it inefficient.
