As I climb the wooden steps to Emily Chen’s North Vancouver home, the scent hits me first – earthy and alive, with none of the rotting stench many associate with compost. Emily, a software engineer by day and urban farmer by passion, greets me with soil-stained hands.
“It started with guilt,” she tells me, gesturing toward three neat compost bins tucked beside her modest vegetable garden. “I kept throwing out food and thinking about where it was going.”
Where our food waste goes—or doesn’t go—has become one of our most pressing climate challenges. When food decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Food waste accounts for approximately 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
In Canada alone, we waste an estimated 2.2 million tonnes of edible food each year. That’s equivalent to 9.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, or taking 2.1 million cars off the road, according to a 2019 report from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
But in backyards, community gardens, and municipal programs across the country, composting is emerging as a powerful tool to address this crisis—turning what would be pollution into possibility.
“When I visited a landfill for a story last year, what struck me wasn’t just the scale,” says David Suzuki Foundation researcher Maria Kohan, whom I interviewed at her Vancouver office. “It was seeing perfectly good food mixed with everything else, knowing it would create methane instead of nourishing soil.”
The chemistry is simple but profound. When food waste decomposes with adequate oxygen—as it does in properly maintained compost—it produces primarily carbon dioxide rather than methane. While still a greenhouse gas, CO2 is significantly less damaging than methane in the short term. More importantly, composting returns nutrients to soil instead of locking them away in landfills.
“We’re not just reducing a negative,” explains Dr. Trevor Anderson, soil scientist at the University of British Columbia. “We’re creating a positive. Compost-enriched soils sequester more carbon and require less synthetic fertilizer, which has its own massive carbon footprint.”
I spent a morning at the City of Vancouver’s composting facility where operations manager Jared Lee showed me mountains of collected organic waste slowly transforming into rich, dark compost. The facility processes over 30,000 tonnes of food scraps annually.
“Ten years ago, most of this would have gone to landfill,” Lee says as we watch a machine turn steaming piles. “Now it becomes a resource communities can use.”
Vancouver’s program represents a growing trend. Since implementing mandatory food waste collection in 2015, the city has diverted thousands of tonnes from landfills. Similar programs exist in Toronto, Halifax, and other Canadian municipalities, though coverage remains patchy nationwide.
Back in Emily’s garden, she shows me how her homemade compost has transformed her previously clay-heavy soil. “My tomatoes went crazy last year,” she laughs. “I barely bought produce all summer.”
Beyond backyard success stories, large-scale composting faces significant challenges. Transportation emissions from collection trucks, inadequate infrastructure in rural areas, and contamination from non-compostable items all complicate the picture.
“Composting alone won’t solve our climate crisis,” warns Dr. Leah Martin-Atkins, environmental policy researcher at Simon Fraser University. “We need a hierarchy: prevent food waste first, redistribute edible food second, then compost what’s truly inedible.”
Organizations like Food Stash Foundation in Vancouver are tackling this hierarchy. Their “rescued food market” redistributes surplus food that would otherwise be wasted, focusing on prevention before composting.
“We’re diverting about 70,000 pounds of food monthly,” explains coordinator Jamie Green when I visit their facility. “What can’t be saved goes to composting. Nothing should end up in landfill.”
Despite growing enthusiasm, the numbers show we’re still at the beginning of the journey. Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates only about 13% of Canadian households actively compost food waste. Many multi-unit dwellings lack convenient composting options, and education about proper methods remains limited.
The climate math is compelling. If Canada were to compost all currently landfilled organic waste, we could reduce methane emissions equivalent to taking millions of cars off the road. Globally, Project Drawdown ranks reducing food waste as the third most impactful climate solution available.
In Indigenous communities across British Columbia, traditional waste management practices often incorporated principles similar to modern composting. “Our ancestors understood cycles,” explains Elder Margaret Williams from the Squamish Nation when we speak at a community garden event. “Nothing was ‘waste’ – everything returned to the land.”
For urban dwellers intimidated by composting, options are expanding. Innovative companies like Urban Harvest offer subscription pickup services in major cities, while apartment-friendly systems like Bokashi fermentation and small-scale vermicomposting (using worms) make composting possible even without outdoor space.
Walking through Emily’s garden as chickadees flit between native plants, the connection between personal action and planetary impact feels tangible. Her three compost bins might seem insignificant against the scale of global emissions, but multiplied across millions of households, such actions represent a powerful shift.
“Some climate solutions require government policy or technological breakthroughs,” Emily reflects as we examine a handful of her finished compost, dark and crumbly between our fingers. “But this? This is something I can do today that makes a difference.”
As I prepare to leave, she hands me a small container of seedlings nurtured in her compost. “Plant these,” she says. “Watch what happens when we close the loop.”
The path from wasted food to climate crisis isn’t inevitable. In gardens, municipal programs, and changing habits across the country, Canadians are discovering that yesterday’s food scraps can become tomorrow’s climate solution – one compost bin at a time.
