It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but diverting food waste from the landfill and converting it into electricity has become a real thing.

And that conversion can help reduce climate change.

William Brangham recently visited a Vermont ice cream factory and the operations next door to find out how it works.

At the Beninjieri's ice cream plant in St. Albans, Vermont, they can churn out over 100 million pints of ice cream a year.

And to assemble each of their dozens of different flavors,

there are precise amounts of added cream,

some chocolate perhaps, or maybe chocolate chips.

But key to the whole operation is keeping those distinct flavors separate.

Say you are making chunky monkey in the factory, and then the next layer comes up and it's Cherry Garcia.

You don't want to mix chunky monkey with Cherry Garcia. Jenna Evans comes up and it's Cherry Garcia. You don't want to mix Chunky Monkey with Cherry Garcia.

Jenna Evans is Ben and Jerry's global sustainability manager.

When you push one flavor out with a little bit of rinse water, that extra flavor that was

left over and the pipes gets pushed into a barrel that gets stored as a waste ice cream

product.

Once that waste is collected, Ben and Jerry's has to figure out what to do with it. into a barrel that gets stored as a waste ice cream product.

Once that waste is collected, Ben and Juries has to figure out what to do with it.

Historically, many organic waste have been sent to landfills, especially food waste.

Eric Roy is an ecological engineer at the University of Vermont.

Once that food waste ends up in a landfill, it can produce methane that can escape

to the atmosphere.

And when that happens, that contributes to climate change.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.

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