In Part 3 of our exploration of food waste management, author Peter Hildebrandt explores communities that compost food waste.
What Goes Around Comes Back Around for Food Waste/Compost
In San Antonio, one westside neighborhood has become part of a sanitation experiment to go organic. At a resident’s home, today’s breakfast is tomorrow’s plant fertilizer. “This is carne guisada,” she says, collecting the remaining food to be disposed in a special bin. She is one of 30,000 residents taking part in the city’s organic recycling program—already recycling aluminum, plastics, and paper, and, for a year now, there’s a third bin she places weekly on her curbside: for leftovers. “I’ve enjoyed it, and it’s good for us,” she says.
David McCary, director of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management, says, “You can now recycle your pizza boxes that may be soiled, as well as look at coffee grinds, fruits, vegetables, mixed fruits—all of those types of materials can now be recycled.”
Food waste and yard trimmings make up over one-third what San Antonians throw away. That trash puts an added strain on the landfill. So, the city is piloting a program to collect organic waste and convert it to compost material. “It’s cheaper to process it than throw it away at the landfill,” adds McCary.
The city expects to recycle 60% of its garbage by 2020. This circle of recycling waste has motivated some to be more aware of the food waste recycling process. The resident mentioned above indirectly composts her food waste as is actually makes it back into her yard and garden through San Antonio’s returning of the compost to neighbors, free of charge.
If successful, the program will be unloaded citywide. It is projected to cost households another $3 per month in garbage collection.
Recycling has also reached a milestone in San Francisco, with food waste collected through an urban compost program reaching 1 million tons, according to the city’s collection service, Recology. It took 15 years to get to the 1-million-ton mark, measuring the food waste taken to one of two compost facilities.
“We started the program in 1996, and the tonnage that we’ve been separating for compost has been increasingly pretty regularly each year,” says Recology CEO Mike Sangiacomo.
San Francisco recently composted its millionth ton of food. Officials with Recology and the Department of the Environment made the announcement, appropriately, at a restaurant in the popular Fisherman’s Wharf—Scoma’s—which was held as a model for recycling.
“The employees have really kind of rallied around this; they want to do it,” says chef and buyer Kelly Bennett. “However, even with the colored bins—green for compost, blue for mixed recycling, and small black for landfill—people make mistakes. I do end up walking around and watching the trash cans once in a while.”
“I’m predicting we’ll hit our second million in five years,” adds Sangiacomo.
Alexa Kielty, Residential Zero Waste and Special Projects Assistant for San Francisco’s Environment Department, believes composting is one of the best things we can do for the environment. “We’re able to increase the soil fertility, also [reduce] methane production, and really create healthy food systems.”