Food waste that ends up in landfills produces a large amount of methane – a more powerful greenhouse gas than even CO2. ... If you look at land usage, around 1.4 billion hectares of land, which is roughly one-third the world's total agricultural land area, is used to grow food that is wasted.Reducing food waste is environmentally important as it keeps food out of landfills. It makes economic sense at the small scale, by lowering household food bills and at the large scale by reducing disposal costs for restaurants, processors and farmers