If you use the right tone apparently you can make anything seem environmentally friendly.
Composting creates solid carbon which can be used in agriculture, amended to soil, or just buried thereby keeping carbon out of the air which is the entire idea of reversing global warming trends. CO2 is CO2 however it got to be that way. “Equivalent amount of nitrous oxide” there’s no such issue, plant matter is made of mostly carbon, the nitrogen isn’t there to be anywhere near equivalent and comes out anyway regardless of if you burned or completely metabolized it with some bacteria.
The lack of critical thinking is very frustrating.
My first guess is that it's being kept as, or converted into, amino acids for use in protein synthesis by the bacteria.
> thereby keeping carbon out of the air
For some of it, yes. However the production, and transportation of compost if it can't be used on site (possible in Japan), puts carbon into the air. I don't know how this balances out.
> The lack of critical thinking is very frustrating.
Critical thinking should go into study design and interpretation, but it doesn't hold a candle to actually doing a full lifecycle analysis. Is this technology better or worse for the environment than the status quo? We don't have enough information to determine that.
But agriculture never having been a basic public service and running on such slim margins that it is tending towards oligopoly, let's not kid ourselves that compost will ever be given a chance
Not all industries have the luxury of joining the green revolution.
https://civileats.com/2022/03/02/california-compost-law-food...
But according to Natgeo
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-t...
Compost is rich in Nitrogenated Nutrients. So far so good.
A composted plant fixes carbon more than a combusted one. It's the carbon capture.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.2c05846/suppl...
> Offsetting nitrogen fertilizer use is particularly important with respect to net GHG emissions because fertilizer production (e.g., urea) is energy- and emissions-intensive to produce.
You want compost for growing things, not because it fixes carbon. It doesn't fix carbon, it provides nutrients for plant life (and some animals such as flies and worms). Some organic matter in a landfill will fossilize, but some of it will also turn into methane, which is typically seen as worse than carbon dioxide for the environment. And, of course, it has to be transported there through fossil fuel using trucks. It uses a lot less fuel to transport a packet of bacteria to waste than to transport waste.