« Ship Ballast Water | Main | Green Cleaning »
October 08, 2005
Food Composting
An article I saw about Massachusetts grocers working with the state's Department of Environmental Protection to recycle organic fruit, vegetable, floral, and deli wastes, as well as waxed paper and cardboard, spurred me to research the topic more. What I found was interesting, piquing a thought about food service establishments working with grocers to compost vegetable matter to turn into nutrient rich soil products, which are used as a fertiliver and soil amendment.
The Whole Foods organic-foods grocery chain composts organic items, and then packages and sells the finished product at their stores. Before they reached that point though, they had to work out problems of sorting, storing, and shipping the waste to facilities that would compost it. Some stores were taking their vegetable matter to pig farmers before Corporate established its recycling policy. Selling the compost offsets disposal costs, reducing total expenses considerably. I contacted Whole Foods to find out what the bottom line was on their composting project, but as of publication deadline I didn't have an answer.
The grocers faced problems that food service establishments will also face, like storage and transportation, but by working together it seems feasible that not only will the problems be surmounted, but also a bigger impact will be made on improving the business' bottom line and the environment.
It was a surprise to learn that the composting program has caused stores to change their purchasing practices. They are more aware of what is thrown away and are reducing their orders for those items. Stores that are paying attention are saving money. For example, Whole Foods found they were throwing out lots of bananas, so they reduced banana purchases by about 2 percent. That small change helped them realize an annual savings of about $220,000.
Why don't food establishments take the same approach as grocers? Food waste is generated and needs to be disposed of, so why not reduce the impact on straining landfills? And furthermore, why not make money selling the resulting compost to companies that can use or retail it? In addition to diverting waste disposal costs from trash removal to recycling, they can also score points with customers by doing something good for the environment.
Saving money, doing something for the environment, and building customer loyalty are ECOnomically Sound reasons to recycle food waste.
Posted by Kit Cassingham
