The newest target in the busy and all-pervasive world of recycling is food scraps. Compost bins in residential backyards are fine, but what about food scraps from restaurants, hotels, school and hospital cafeterias, catering companies and supermarkets?
They wind up as solid waste trucked to distant garbage sites because Sonoma County’s solid waste landfill is closed.
North Bay Corp. and Redwood Empire Disposal have joined forces with Sonoma Compost Co. and the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency (SCWMA) to begin a pilot program to collect food scraps from large scale food distributors mentioned above. It will begin along the 101 Corridor from Santa Rosa to Petaluma with Rohnert Park right in the middle. Basically, it’s a giant composting venture.
“Studies from SCWMA have found about 26 percent of commercial material taken to land sites is compostible food scraps,” said Steve McCaffrey, director of governmental affairs for North Bay Corp. “For two years we’ve been compiling a list of businesses interested in such a program... we’re working with SCWMA and Sonoma Compost providing outreach and support for training staff and providing the necessary carts and bins for collection of food scraps.”
As you can imagine, it’s a massive task. “It’s a work in progress,” said Pam Davis of North Bay Corp. “We’ve started an outreach program, practically going door-to-door, case by case, with what they need to know and providing bilingual posters.”
Still to be worked out are the actual mechanics of food scrap collection. It could be trucks with a separate compartment for food scraps and probably separate colored bins for it.
The biggest part is educating staffers at restaurants, cafeterias and other major food servers to do the basic separating of food scraps from solid waste and recycled material.
“Basically, it’s a one-on-one job, never-ending but we want to keep it simple,” said McCaffrey. “The big menace are plastic bags. We’re trying to keep them out of composting bins by telling people to bag the smaller bags in a bigger bag and tying it off.”
McCaffrey said, “We’re at least a month away from our first start. Already we have a list of about 100 restaurants and supermarkets willing to be partners with this program.”
It’s easy to envision the food scrap program at work. Employees in restaurants and cafeterias scrape plates and steam table leftovers in a wastebasket near the kitchen, then it’s taken to an outside bin or dumpster. Supermarket workers do the same thing with carrot tops, excess lettuce or cabbage leaves, bruised fruit and then to the dumpster awaiting the truck with its separate bin.
It’s simple, yes, but setting up the system, broadening the outreach goals and educating employees, plus outfitting the trucks are huge assignments at this point.
“San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose have food scrap program in place,” said McCaffrey. “I believe solid waste landfills will be obsolete five years from now.”
For information on the latest progress in this institutional food scrap composting drive, call McCaffrey at 586-7753 or Pam Davis at 586-8215.
“You know, it used to be garbage collectors were at the bottom of the employment ladder,” said McCaffrey. “But with all this recycling and composting, it’s changed. Talk about job security.”