Rotting chicken shows food emissions role

To understand more about food's role in emissions, Dr Jillian Newton from the Biomolecular Sciences Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University kept a chicken under heat lamps for the course of a week.

Our timelapse camera captured the sight of the bird darkening and then going through a period of rapid swelling as gases formed and expanded inside the chicken.

Dr Newton calculated that the 1.2kg chicken produced 31.2 litres of biogas - which would contain 79.8g of methane and carbon dioxide.

"When food is thrown away and discarded it goes through different states of decomposition," she said.