Getting Food Out of the Landfills

• Paper: Chapel Hill Herald (NC)
• Author: BERNADETTE PELISSIER Columnist
• December 8, 2007
• Section: Editorial Page: 2

Recently, I spent several weeks in Asheville helping my daughter and son-in-law after the birth of their twins. I cooked dinners and prepared meals to freeze for later. My cooking generated a lot of food scraps: potato peels, lettuce leaves, broccoli stems, cabbage cores, etc.

I started getting quite annoyed at having to throw all of these food scraps into the garbage. At home, we give the food scraps to our chickens and rabbits. Why would I want to put food scraps in the landfill? Every time I go out to the chicken coop, the chickens run up to greet me. They know there is a treat about to be delivered and they are very excited.

Those chickens produce eggs for my family, friends and neighbors. In spring and fall, my husband collects the chicken and rabbit droppings and tills them into our vegetable garden. Then the cycle starts over again.

I often cook at my parents' house. They don't have chickens, but all scraps are thrown into their large vegetable and flower garden.

Toward the end of my visit in Asheville, I just couldn't tolerate putting the food scraps in the garbage. I put them in a bag in my car trunk and took them home to give to the chickens and rabbits.

Why do I talk at length about recycling food scraps?

I think about all the recent newspaper articles on landfills and transit stations. The siting of a solid waste transfer station for Orange County was raised by candidates in the recent Carrboro and Chapel Hill elections. Because of the community opposition, the County Commissioners recently decided to start over the search process for a transfer station.

In all communities there is opposition to landfills and transfer stations. I don't know of anyone who says they want a landfill or transfer station near their home.

In all these discussions about locating landfills or transfer stations, how much effort is devoted to further reducing the waste stream that goes into a landfill?

There are efforts locally and nationwide to reduce the waste stream through food recycling. The Chapel Hill Restaurant Group was awarded the title of Sustainable Business of the Year for 2007 by the Foundation for a Sustainable Community. One of their accomplishments is food recycling. They contract with a private firm that converts the table scraps into compost.

Recent e-mails from various lists have led me to other news about food recycling. In October, a restaurant chain in the Northwest, Burgerville, rolled out a composting and recycling program. It set a goal of diverting 85 of its food waste from landfills.

An organic recycling specialist in North Carolina state government expressed interest in developing an organic recycling program such as one in Canada. Several municipalities there have a green bin program where food waste is converted into compost for landscaping and farming. Residents are provided a green-colored bin for their organic material. Pickup is weekly. The average household garbage bag had typically contained 30 to 50 percent of organic material which no longer goes into the landfill.

Home from Asheville, I called Blair Pollock from the Solid Waste Management Department. He told me that recycling of food waste had been considered but rejected. The cost of recycling was higher than the return. But equally important was the aesthetic factor. Places with food waste recycling are in northern climates where the food will not rot quickly as it will here during the summer months.

Regardless of the challenges in implementing a pickup system for food scraps, individual households could do much more. Those of us in the rural areas have plenty of space where food can be discarded. Even in the towns, there are many homes with forested areas ideal for easy disposal of food scraps. You don't even have to compost it; just stick it under the leaves in the woods or under some mulched bush.

What about the chickens that are now allowed in Chapel Hill and Carrboro? Why not have more of us with chickens in the back yard? Chickens will supply yourself and neighbors with eggs and at the same time you can feed them your food scraps.

Blair Pollock also mentioned the restaurant food recycling program. Here the cost of a ton of food waste recycled by a restaurant is cheaper than waste disposal. Recycling costs $80 per ton versus $86 per ton for waste disposal. There is much opportunity for greater organic recycling. Less then 12 percent of the 260 restaurants in the county participate in this voluntary program.

Food scraps should no longer be referred to as waste.

Bernadette Pelissier is a retired social scientist who lives in Orange County and serves on several community boards. Readers can contact her at bpelissier@juno.com or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.