Food Waste

Look inside your garbage can. See those egg shells from last night's souffle, that banana peel from this morning's breakfast and that apple core from lunch? You're throwing away something that, given some time, could make your plants sprout and fortify your grass. The key word here is composting, the process of turning food waste into a decomposed mixture rich in nutrients. The mixture helps restore nutrients that plants need to grow. "Composting not only helps the environment - it can reduce the volume of your waste by 60 to 80 percent - it's also great for your plants and yard," said Rick Ryan, park manager for the TreePeople, a Beverly Hills environmental organization.

In the quest to green Philadelphia, officials are turning to the city's kitchen sinks. At an event Thursday, the city will unveil a pilot program to install garbage disposals in 200 Point Breeze and West Oak Lane homes. The goal is to reduce the food waste going to the landfill, which costs the city $68 a ton just for the tipping fee. Instead, residents will be encouraged to pulverize their veggie trimmings, orange rinds, and leftovers in the disposal, sending it to the city's treatment plants, where it will provide fuel for electricity generation and be transformed into fertilizer.

Food-waste composting, largely associated with latter-day hippies and extreme greenies, got a major boost Tuesday when trash-industry behemoth Waste Management Inc. announced it was investing in a company that owns an industrial-size composting facility in Wilmington. No amount was disclosed, other than that the company is not taking a controlling share. But just the fact of the investment thrilled recycling advocates. "If there's any sign that the world's about to go through a major shift in trash, there it is," said Maurice Sampson II, who owns Niche Recycling Inc., a Philadelphia company that works with commercial customers that generate food waste.

For now, it's mostly just a flat expanse of asphalt and wood chips, swept by a chilly wind off the Delaware River. But come Monday, trucks loaded with tons of vegetable scraps and bits of meat will begin rolling into what officials say is the largest food-waste composting facility on the East Coast. Here at the 27-acre Wilmington Organic Recycling Center, about 500 tons of food and yard waste a day will be transformed - in a matter of weeks - into soil and mulch. Officials say the $20 million facility promises to spur already-rocketing interest in composting among supermarkets, restaurants, universities, hospitals, and others with large-scale food operations.

The township plans to buy more than nine acres of land near the Matsunk waste-treatment plant to build a facility that would recycle sewage into fertilizer and that could save $525,000 annually, officials said. William Dunn, the township liaison to the recycling committee, told a joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and the recycling committee Thursday night that the facility could be built in a year. Assistant Township Manager Deborah Rendon said she had no information on the cost of the land or how soon the sale might be completed.

As part of a drive to help feed the hungry in Philadelphia, 16 area hotels have joined forces to support Philabundance, a local project that aims to eliminate food waste. At the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel last week, Brian Fogarty and Frank Audino prepare to load some leftover bread onto a Philabundance truck for distribution to the needy.

A state official said Deptford Township must pay back about $73,000 in recycling-grant awards because the township reported nearly 10 times more recycling tonnage than it actually received in 1989 and 1990. Les Foster, the chief of the Bureau of Contract Administration and Finance, said Wednesday that either the township would pay back the money directly or the state would adjust Deptford's 1991 recycling grant, which has not yet been sent. In 1990, Foster said, Deptford's Polen Farms submitted a form to the township reporting it had collected 36,500 tons of food waste for municipal recycling.

As we face the buffet table at multiple holiday parties and events, food waste should be on all of our minds. In 2003, the latest year for which statistics are complete, New Jerseyans generated an estimated 1.5 million tons of food waste, of which just more than 220,000 tons - or about 15 percent - was recycled. Much of the remaining 85 percent was sent to landfills, where it led to production of methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide and that even the most advanced landfill can only partially capture.

Colleges are charged with educating students on a broad range of topics. Teaching them how to waste food shouldn't be one of them. Food is the most common material Pennsylvanians throw away, comprising 12 percent of the state's municipal waste stream. Pennsylvania squanders enough food annually to nearly fill Lincoln Financial Field. Local universities, many of which are now separating food from regular trash, provide hope for reducing that amount. Food diversion - separating food waste from the trash stream either through wasting less, composting, or feeding livestock - brings environmental and economic benefits.

New Jersey pig farmers won't be bringing home quite as much bacon. But their swine will do fine. The city has approved a six-month contract to continue farmers' garbage collections for the pigs. "We still got a job, let's put it that way," said Robert Shisler Jr., one of 14 Gloucester County pig farmers who truck away table scraps from Philly curbsides in the dark of night. The farmers also got a 20 percent cutback in what the city pays them, a city Streets Department official said.

In the quest to green Philadelphia, officials are turning to the city's kitchen sinks. At an event Thursday, the city will unveil a pilot program to install garbage disposals in 200 Point Breeze and West Oak Lane homes. The goal is to reduce the food waste going to the landfill, which costs the city $68 a ton just for the tipping fee. Instead, residents will be encouraged to pulverize their veggie trimmings, orange rinds, and leftovers in the disposal, sending it to the city's treatment plants, where it will provide fuel for electricity generation and be transformed into fertilizer.

At the Earthship booth, people will be able to pound tires that could soon become the foundation of a home. The Hemp Hut area will push a plant with myriad uses: oil, clothing, food, and paper. (No, it won't get you high.) And a small stage is powered by solar panels - the better for the Sustainable Living Roadshow to get its eco-message across. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Philadelphia Folk Festival is veering green. Note to young patrons: Even some of the music is recycled.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Americans waste an estimated 14 percent to 40 percent of the food produced for their consumption. It happens in fields, in stores and in your kitchen. That's bad for the environment and it can be very bad for your wallet. "Food waste is one of those things that hide in plain sight," says Jonathan Bloom, author of "American Wasteland," about food waste. "When it's really put in front of people, it does surprise them. " Farmers toss imperfect heads of lettuce, grocers chuck bruised tomatoes and, by best estimates, consumers waste about 25 percent of the food they buy - throwing out browned bananas, outdated cheese and unused leftovers.

Food-waste composting, largely associated with latter-day hippies and extreme greenies, got a major boost Tuesday when trash-industry behemoth Waste Management Inc. announced it was investing in a company that owns an industrial-size composting facility in Wilmington. No amount was disclosed, other than that the company is not taking a controlling share. But just the fact of the investment thrilled recycling advocates. "If there's any sign that the world's about to go through a major shift in trash, there it is," said Maurice Sampson II, who owns Niche Recycling Inc., a Philadelphia company that works with commercial customers that generate food waste.

As Maurice M. Sampson II embarks on what could be a substantial game-changer in the unattractive yet critical realm of food-waste disposal, a "painful" reminder of an earlier failure in his 30-year recycling career sits behind his Mount Airy home: A bottle crusher, designed to significantly reduce Philadelphia tavern owners' waste and their costs to get rid of it. It could have made Sampson some serious cash. But a 1996 pilot project launched by Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. to roll out as many as 600 crushers in Philadelphia-area bars by the end of 1997 managed to get only 50 installed before the brewer divested its recycling ventures.

For now, it's mostly just a flat expanse of asphalt and wood chips, swept by a chilly wind off the Delaware River. But come Monday, trucks loaded with tons of vegetable scraps and bits of meat will begin rolling into what officials say is the largest food-waste composting facility on the East Coast. Here at the 27-acre Wilmington Organic Recycling Center, about 500 tons of food and yard waste a day will be transformed - in a matter of weeks - into soil and mulch. Officials say the $20 million facility promises to spur already-rocketing interest in composting among supermarkets, restaurants, universities, hospitals, and others with large-scale food operations.

Smoked duck with lingonberry and pecan glaze, braised mustard greens and oyster chowder were on the menu at Philadelphia University's Thanksgiving dinner for 600 students last week. Chefs were carving roasted turkey; cherry chutney, parsnip mash, and a cranberry and sour cherry polenta tart were among the offerings. If that wasn't impressive enough for a college dining hall, consider this: The entire menu was sourced locally, the free-range turkey from Koch's Farm in Lewistown Valley, the produce from 12 surrounding farms, the oysters from Long Island (OK, a stretch there, but still within 150 miles)

Passersby may have noted a crane towering over the Four Seasons Hotel last week, just out of misting range of the nearby Swann Fountain. The crane was hoisting microturbines to the roof, to help generate the hotel's energy (equal to getting 509 cars off the road annually), and as a bonus, hauling up the wooden frames and bags of house-blend compost for what is to be a modest kitchen garden. It was certainly the most visible bit of greening going on in the city's hard-pressed feeding sector.

Who would have thought it would fall to the 14-by-20-inch cafeteria tray to give us this season's lecture on the virtues of mindful eating, and the pitfalls, in a warming world, of profligacy, overindulgence, and wasting a third of a gallon of water per wash (not to mention a lot of food). The Hummer. That you understand. A big, fat hog. Exhibit A on the enemies list of all things good and green. (And, blessedly, going out of production, a casualty of belated gas-mileage consciousness and, well, just plain consciousness.

Colleges are charged with educating students on a broad range of topics. Teaching them how to waste food shouldn't be one of them. Food is the most common material Pennsylvanians throw away, comprising 12 percent of the state's municipal waste stream. Pennsylvania squanders enough food annually to nearly fill Lincoln Financial Field. Local universities, many of which are now separating food from regular trash, provide hope for reducing that amount. Food diversion - separating food waste from the trash stream either through wasting less, composting, or feeding livestock - brings environmental and economic benefits.