How sewage treatment plants could handle food waste, sparing landfills and the climate

Rather than generating climate-warming emissions and wasting nutrients and energy, food waste can become a resource if processed in sewage treatment plants.

By: Ahmed Ibrahim Yunus, Georgia Institute of Technology and Joe Frank Bozeman III, Georgia Institute of Technology, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: March 13, 2026

Words: 1,206

Last Updated: 4 months, 3 weeks ago

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By Ahmed Ibrahim Yunus, Georgia Institute of Technology and Joe Frank Bozeman III, Georgia Institute of Technology

Every day, food scraps disappear into trash bags, are hauled away and forgotten. But that waste could be turned into something productive.

Across the United States, about 97 million metric tons of food waste are discarded each year, of which about 37 million metric tons end up buried in landfills.

Once underground, that organic material breaks down …

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