Vancouver Food Scrap Recycling

Metro Vancouver and member municipalities encourage food scraps recycling because it's the right thing to do, it takes waste out of our landfills, it reduces our methane contributions, and it creates compost and bioenergy.

When food and other organic materials end up in the garbage they:

• Create methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that adds to global warming. In the landfill, buried under layers of waste and without access to oxygen, food can't decompose properly.
• Use up a lot of precious landfill space. Space is limited, and creating more landfills is undesirable. Over 30% of what we send to the landfill in our region is compostable organics.
• Make waste-to-energy processes less efficient because of their high moisture content. About a third of the region's waste is disposed in the waste-to-energy facility.