Every year, hundreds of millions of tons of food goes into landfills. This includes food that never makes it to the dining table from the kitchen, or the restaurant or the grocery storeroom.

Instead, those food scraps, that leftover pasta and sauce, those spoiled strawberries sit in landfills emitting methane as the food breaks down over time. Methane is a greenhouse gas nearly 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

According to the United Nations, food waste now accounts for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. To put it in perspective, that's more than the entire aviation sector.

Those are the environmental costs. In terms of financial costs, the U.S. alone spends $218 billion each year growing and producing food that is wasted, according to the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.

Composting, or turning food scraps into nutrient dense soil amendments, helps reduce methane emissions and is catching on as a practice both at the personal and commercial level.

We will begin Thursdays "Sound of Ideas" with a discussion about composting with companies and individuals already doing it and answer your questions.

To end the show, we bring you the latest episode of our music podcast, "Shuffle."

Guests:
-George Hunyadi, Chief Executive Officer, Earth Peak Solutions
- Robert Kurtz, Commercial Sales Coordinator, Rust Belt Riders
- Eric Diamond, Chief Executive Office, Central Kitchen
- Amanda Rabinowitz, Host and Producer, "Shuffle" and "All Things Considered"
-Scott Paris, Musician