Calculate your household waste carbon footprint by material and disposal route using EPA WARM factors, and see how recycling and composting cut it.
Enter the weekly weight (lbs) of each waste type and how you dispose of it. Landfill, recycling, composting and combustion each have a different EPA WARM emission factor.
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Every bin of household waste has a carbon footprint, and where it goes matters as much as how much you throw away. This calculator adds up the greenhouse gas emissions of your paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and yard waste across landfill, recycling and composting using EPA Waste Reduction Model (WARM) emission factors, then shows how much diverting waste from the landfill cuts your total.
Household waste emissions are the greenhouse gases tied to disposing of what you throw away. Organic materials like food and paper release methane — roughly 28 times more potent than CO₂ — as they decompose without oxygen in landfills, while recycling avoids the emissions of manufacturing new materials from raw resources. Net emissions depend on both the material and its disposal route, which is why the same pound of waste can either emit or save carbon.
Emission Calculation
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See which materials and bins drive most of your footprint so you can focus where it counts.
Recycling factors are negative — quantify the carbon you save by keeping materials out of the landfill.
See how composting food and yard waste prevents the landfill methane that dominates organics emissions.
Benchmark against the EPA figure of 4.9 pounds of waste per person per day.
Every factor comes from the EPA Waste Reduction Model, the standard reference for US waste emissions.
According to EPA Facts & Figures, the average American generates about 4.9 pounds of municipal solid waste per day, or roughly 1,790 pounds (811 kg) per year. About a third is recycled or composted; the rest is landfilled or combusted. This calculator compares your per-person total to that benchmark.
Organic waste buried in a landfill decomposes anaerobically and releases methane, a greenhouse gas about 28 times more potent than CO₂ over 100 years. Recycling avoids the energy and emissions of making new materials from raw resources, and composting converts organics aerobically with far less methane. That's why recycling and composting show up as negative (carbon-saving) factors here.
Metals — especially aluminium — save the most per ton because mining and smelting virgin metal is so energy-intensive (EPA WARM puts mixed metals near −4.5 metric tons CO₂e per ton recycled). Paper and cardboard are next, then textiles and plastics; glass has a smaller but still positive benefit.
This calculator gives your whole-bin footprint across every material and disposal route, and shows how recycling plus composting reduce it. The Composting Emissions Reduction Calculator zooms in on one action — composting food or yard waste instead of landfilling it — and quantifies just that saving in detail, including landfill-gas capture. Use this one for the big picture and that one to plan composting.
Every per-ton factor is from the EPA Waste Reduction Model (WARM v16), the US standard for waste-management greenhouse gas accounting, combined with the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator for the car, tree and gasoline comparisons.
Yes. Switch the unit toggle to metric to enter weights in kilograms and read tonnes. The WARM factors are US-average, so results are most precise for US households, but the relative benefits of recycling and composting hold worldwide.