Organic materials, from yardwaste to food scraps, continue to be the largest component of municipal solid waste. According to a National Resources Defense Council report, around 40% of all edible food in the United States is wasted.
The inclusion of organics in the wastestream takes up valuable landfill space at a time when available space is shrinking and costs are rising. It also affects the environment; food scraps are creating methane and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. A better alternative is to divert organic materials and convert them into such useful products as mulch, compost, fuel, and electricity. Organics management also creates jobs and supports the local economy.
“There are many benefits to managing organics as a valuable resource rather than as waste,” says Athena Lee Bradley, projects manager with the Northeast Recycling Council Inc. NERC is a nonprofit organization that conducts projects in the 10 Northeast states, as well as around the country. Its mission is to promote environmental sustainability through materials management.
Some of the advantages include reducing disposal needs and costs; using organic materials to make compost, a marketable product that can not only enrich the soil and reduce the need for fertilizer and irrigation but also contribute to the local economy through job creation and business development; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and reducing air pollution by eliminating the need to burn yardwaste. “Restricting or banning of open burning contributes to a more environmentally sound organics management,” Bradley says. “Residents and even towns will continue to burn leaves and yardwaste unless regulations are in place to restrict or ban burning.”
Regulations play a role in managing organics. Banning yard debris (and other organics) from disposal in landfills and incinerators promotes diversion if the ban is successfully enforced and effective education and organics diversion programs are in place, Bradley believes. “Mandatory regulations require residents and other organics generators to participate in a designated program.”
In fact, she says, government regulation is the driving force in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Vancouver-and could be in Vermont by 2020. In addition, she says, Massachusetts will begin banning commercial food scraps from the landfill in October, and Connecticut and Rhode Island are considering similar bans.
Resistance
Organics are a huge contributor to landfills, and landfills are expensive. If diverting organics from landfills presents communities with a significant opportunity for cost savings, economic development, and an enhanced environment, why aren’t more municipalities doing it?
“Most aren’t,” Bradley admits. Ironically, a lot of communities want to start composting, she thinks. This is evidenced by several citizen-led initiatives. But, although it’s slowly catching on, diversion is happening mostly on the West Coast and in a handful of states on the East Coast. She mentions a couple of tribal operations that have been successful.
In 2011 the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, a federally recognized Indian tribe in Prior Lake, MN, opened an organics recycling facility on a 47-acre parcel of land held in federal trust. Its proximity to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area has benefited the facility and its customers, which include residential, commercial, industrial, and community entities. The tribe charges tipping fees for disposal of organic materials, including brush, woodwaste, source-separated organics, manure, straw, grass, leaves, foodwaste, and paper waste, all of which is composted in windrows and turned into a range of compost and compost blends for retail and wholesale.
Similarly, in 1997, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians added foodwaste collection to its successful, large-scale composting operation at the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina. The tribe now composts approximately 72 tons of food waste and 96 dry tons of biosolids per month. The foodwaste, collected from seven local restaurants, including three within Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, sells for $35 per ton. The tribe saves thousands of dollars in annual tipping fees and tribal members benefit by purchasing compost at affordable prices.
Excuses for not implementing foodwaste programs typically focus on the customer. “Odor is a concern,” Bradley explains. “Residents are leery of the “˜yuck’ factor.” Neither are they thrilled with the thought of another truck in their neighborhood. Her solution for that is to use split trucks to collect both recycling and food scraps, or to organize the route to an every-other-week curbside collection schedule. Food scrap collection will require weekly pickup, but garbage and recyclables can be picked up on alternate weeks, saving transportation costs and eliminating the need for a second truck.
Responses
Residents aren’t the only ones complaining about odor. Bradley says haulers have put up resistance to collecting foodwaste, too. “They say it’s smelly and it makes more for them to haul.”
Getting haulers onboard for collecting organics is important, although NERC offers a few alternative suggestions to curbside collection, such as working directly with farmers to collect food scraps from commercial generators for on-farm composting, allowing small business generators to use municipal dropoff food scrap collection options and implementing collection of food scraps by nonprofit organizations.
A successful program must be tailored to meet the needs of the community, Bradley says. Because curbside collection is costly, especially in rural and small town areas, where the low population density makes hauling more costly and inefficient, two small towns in close proximity to each other in rural Massachusetts joined forces to save costs. Hamilton (population of 7,764) and Wenham (population of 4,875) collect organics with a split body truck that also collects recyclables on a weekly basis, allowing Hamilton to switch trash collection to every other week.
Starting with special events or a small commercial pilot program to incorporate food processor wastes, supermarket produce trimmings, or preconsumer restaurant scraps can lead to a broader program. While food scraps from restaurants can have higher levels of such contamination as plastics, up to 90% of waste thrown out by supermarkets and restaurants is food or other organic scraps suitable for donation or composting.
Watervliet, in Albany County, NY, completed a six-month pilot to collect source-separated organics from 50 residences. Food scraps are collected by the city and composted at the recently built passive aeration facility. Watervliet pays $51 a ton for landfill tipping fees, which should save $28,000 a year if 75% of the residents participate. The Watervliet Organic Waste program is adding 50 residents per quarter, and the city is working with the municipality of Minoa, NY, to build an anaerobic digester for processing food scraps.
Seasonal Collections
Some curbside collection tends to be seasonal, such as leaves in the fall and brush in the spring. To reduce collection expenses, some communities collect only on designated days during the season or offer dropoff service.
Waitsburg, WA, purchased a wood chipper through Washington State’s Coordinated Prevention Grant Program. No-cost chipping events in the spring and fall remove organic material from the municipal solid waste stream, offer an alternative to outdoor burning, and provide a source of wood chips for landscaping use.
Berkeley County, WV, developed a County Organics Recycling Program that accepts brush, Christmas trees, leaves, grass clippings, and garden waste at the Recycling Center. The brush is ground biannually into mulch.
During peak tourist season on Mackinac Island, an island resort area in Michigan, 15,000 visitors add to the year-round population of 500. Organics are collected (by horse-drawn trailers) weekly during winter, but daily through summer. In 2008, about 635 tons of food scraps were collected, as well as 583 tons of yardwaste. Residents are charged $3 per bag for garbage, but only $1.50 per bag for organics.
Other Options
Windrows-aerated static piles-are a great way to handle foodwaste, but other methods are always being evaluated. Food dehydrators, popular with colleges, capture dehydrated food and send it to compost, which makes it lighter in weight and volume and thus easier to get rid of. However, some potential methods for handling organics come with complications. Food pulpers require a lot of water, Bradley notes, and carry a risk of polluting the water by adding nutrients. Both are costly.
Anaerobic digestion uses a series of processes in which microorganisms break down organic material in the absence of oxygen. “Anaerobic is hugely expensive,” Bradley says. “It needs a certain recipe, a mixture of food with other materials. It’s less forgiving of contamination.” It also requires good flow of material and significant tonnage. That’s why it’s more common on farms in the Midwest.
The Novi Energy anaerobic digester in Fremont, MI, was designed to handle 100,000 tons of food processing wastes that previously were landfilled. Receiving waste from a Gerber baby food plant and other area food processors, organic residues and manure from agricultural operations, and restaurant grease, the plant has a 20-year contract with Consumer Energy to sell its electricity to supply about 1,200 homes. The digestate, the material left behind, is used to fertilize 5,000 acres of corn crop.
The high capital costs and the material volumes necessary for operation limit its application in many rural and small town settings, but some municipalities are making it work. The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, a public benefit corporation formed for the purpose of developing, financing, and implementing a comprehensive countywide solid waste management program, is working with private haulers to establish effective route densities to meet the needs of its small towns. Located in the mid-Hudson Valley Region of New York State, Ulster County has three villages, 20 towns, and one city. UCRRA opened a composting facility in 2012, using an aerated static pile method to manage yardwaste, food scraps, and other organics. Private haulers collect and deliver the waste to the county composting facility, which charges $50 per ton for separated organics, compared with $100 per ton for landfilling.
Victory in Vancouver
The city of Vancouver, WA, has collected yard debris at the curb for “a long time,” says Rich McConaghy. The optional every-other-week service is used by about 50% of its residents-but it’s not the only successful program.
Leaf coupons are distributed countywide for three months of the year, permitting free disposal at dropoff sites. “It’s a value of $10 to $15 per truck,” McConaghy explains. The program brought in 23,052 cubic yards of leaves. Expenses for the 2013 leaf coupon program amounted to $111,973.
Leaf collection costs the county $15,000, but McConaghy considers it a good trade-off. “We don’t have equipment to pick up leaves; there’s a higher cost involved with that.” Even with 5% or less participation, about 150,000 coupons were distributed. According to a waste analysis, over the past five years, yard debris is down, and paper, glass, and metal are being recycled. An added bonus is that the leaves are processed into mulch. “Leaf compost is valued here.” Composting the leaves also helps with stormwater drainage.
A similar program is available to city residents in the spring. Residents receive two spring yard debris coupons and another for up to four tires. There were 939 tires brought in from 299 coupons redeemed. The tip fee was $2,982.
Their 2013 Spring Yard Debris (and tire) coupon program spent $46,316 for the redemption of 3,346 coupons that brought in 890 tons of yard debris. McConaghy calculates 4% usage, based on 40,000 homes and two coupons per household.
In addition, one Saturday a year the waste company brings drop boxes to a central location to pick up bulky items, yard debris, and metal. “It helps a lot,” McConaghy says. “Yard debris makes up half the material from residents.” Saturday neighborhood cleanups resulted in the collection of 425 tons in 2013 and tip fees of $19,780.
“Yard debris is a significant portion of what is collected,” McConaghy states. “We would have a much lower recycling rate if residents chose not to divert their yard debris from the garbage stream.” In 2012, Waste Connections of Washington collected 14,228 tons of recyclables, 12,366 tons of yard debris and 26,020 tons of garbage from single-family residential customers. “Using those numbers, we get a 50.5% recycling rate from single-family curbside service.
“The goal is to clean the community,” McConaghy continues. “There’s an interest in getting organics out of the waste stream, a desire to reduce methane and greenhouse gases.”
Having watched Portland’s “drama” with the foodwaste program it launched two years ago, McConaghy is in no rush to bring curbside residential collection to Vancouver, even though there are some clear benefits. “Food collection doesn’t leave a lot of garbage, so we’d only have to collect garbage every other week.”
Keeping organics out of the landfill is complicated, but worthwhile, McConaghy says. In addition to dodging community concern about odor, diversion helps avoid landfill regulation. Dumping organics is “trickier to process and it increases the price and distance. It’s definitely more expensive than garbage.”
Mixing foodwaste with yard debris further complicates the issue, he says, especially when compostable bags, cups, and service ware are introduced. “They are hard to distinguish from plastic, so they’re being pulled out,” McConaghy explains.
Compostable service ware is changing the stream of what composting facilities want, McConaghy believes. There’s a problem with the numbering system for plastics that contributes to mis-sorting by “hopeful recyclers,” he says, but “composters don’t want bio-degradable plastics. Quick processing-30 to 60 days-is the goal. Service ware takes 90 to 120 days or higher temperatures.” What is the right mix? Food only, he says.
That can be difficult in school programs, like Clark County’s SOS-Save Organic Scraps. “We found more compostable paper and contaminants from the middle and high schools,” McConaghy reveals. One thing that helps with the worry about sorting is a gorilla band, which keeps bags in the cart when food is dumped at schools.
The SOS program is their primary focus for commercial foodwaste collection. The foodwaste is sent to a transfer station in the Portland metro region, which is in turn sent to a digester or composter. An anaerobic digester is in the works for commercial organics. It will eliminate transportation of organic waste to Portland, Seattle, and other sites.
Introducing programs isn’t easy. Change is difficult for the conservative, blue-collar community. “They don’t like change; they’re not as edgy as Portland,” McConaghy opines. “They want convenience. It takes time to adapt.” Instead, the community’s approach to residential foodwaste for the next few years is likely to favor an emphasis on reducing foodwaste rather than collecting it. “This actually has a sound rationale based in sustainable material management strategies. Much more energy and GHG is saved by growing/purchasing less food to start with.”
Anaerobic Answers
Transportation cost is an issue, whether it’s a small, decentralized or a large, centralized facility. That’s why Norma McDonald, North American sales manager with Organic Waste Systems Inc., constructors of anaerobic digestion plants, says we must view anaerobic digesters as the next step in modern infrastructure. “It’s not an option; it’s not a choice,” she insists. “We must shift from landfills as the norm. We must do what is appropriate, not cheapest. It’s a mindset shift to rethink how waste is managed.”
Digesters come with challenges. Mostly, McDonald says, it’s a question of the type of digester and the amount of pretreatment. “You can mix food with packaging if it’s compostable. Acceptable waste for our digesters includes molded fiber, digestible plastics, paper towels and even disposable diapers. Ours is high-solids system. The definition of biowaste is broad if we have the right technology.”
The choice starts with the feedstock and takes into consideration policy, cost, and final product. “If compost quality is the primary objective, you want no contamination,” McDonald points out.
McDonald lists three options with the end product: Blend it with other materials to shorten aerobic composting time; dewater it and use the solid fraction for aerobic curing because solids have a higher stability index, then combine the remaining liquid with fresh feedstock that’s too dry for site-specific applications; or combine it with other refuse for refuse-derived fuel. “Renewable CNG costs are lower than conventional CNG,” she says. However, when weighing fees for treating waste versus potential revenue for output, she says, it’s important to keep in mind that there is no open market for energy sales in the US.
Determining the economics of competing with the fuel market is pointless if the participation rate in an organics program is low. “The most challenging portion of all sectors of waste is household,” McDonald sums up. “It’s easier to come up with a direction and educate at hospitals and universities, but the transiency, individuality, and laziness of the residential sector is difficult to overcome. But to reach the maximum level of diversion, we must get to that sector.”
Pennsylvania Action
Pennsylvania is getting to that sector through legislation. The 1988 Pennsylvania Recycling Acts 101 and 140 stipulate mandatory curbside collection and prohibit burning of recyclables (including yardwaste). The ordinances requiring participation include enforcement mechanisms and compel each county to have a plan. The legislation includes performance grants, which were recently increased. For every ton processed, the state pays $5.
“Communities with 10,000 or more must collect leaf waste,” elaborates Lorin Meeder, environmental programs coordinator for Cranberry Township, PA. “We had a dropoff [program] with static pile composting, but it was inconvenient for everyone; we needed something different.”
Leaf waste and yardwaste, including grass clippings, is now picked up nine and a half months of the year, and the haulers under contract must process it as compost in windrows. The township went from collecting 10-12 tons of leaf waste to 2,600 tons under the new Collection Connection program.
In spring the garbage doubled due to yard cleanup, Meeder recalls. Nevertheless, Cranberry Township was able to reduce the amount sent to the landfill from 12,000 to 7,500-8,000 tons. “We reduced the amount by 40 percent four years ago,” he estimates.
Money is an incentive, but Meeder says the goals are to “come into compliance with the act; to be a leader demonstrating a high quality of life, economic development and that this is a great place to live; to stabilize rates; to increase efficiency and reduce truck traffic 75 percent by going with one hauler; to connect with the community through customer service; and to be an example to others.”
Residents pay about $20 per month for the service, with stabilized cost increases over five years to cover fuel cost adjustments. Taking advantage of bundled services provides savings and, Meeder believes, has helped contribute to the 98% participation rate.
The program has helped reduce their environmental impact. Residential recycling has doubled. That, in turn, has reduced the tons of wasteland filled annually from 11,030 to 7,619. Added environmental benefits include lower fuel usage, less truck traffic, and a smaller carbon footprint. “Sustainability is the No. 1 goal of the Cranberry Plan,” Meeder states.
The Tale of Tacoma
On the other side of the country, a six-month pilot project had many of the same beneficial outcomes, so the city of Tacoma, WA, which had been picking up yardwaste since the 1990s, added foodwaste in 2012.”We did a waste characterization study in 2010,” remembers Gary Kato, division manager for solid waste. The study estimated that foodwaste comprised a third (14,000 tons per year) of the garbage collected from single-family and duplex residences. With a goal of meeting a percentage of waste reduction over a period of time, they realized that foodwaste held potential. “It’s a high percentage we could remove.”
As a result, in April 2012, the Tacoma Solid Waste Management Division expanded its curbside yardwaste program to accept all types of food scraps. Based on comparison between 2011 and 2012, garbage was reduced by 3,000 tons that year, achieving the goal to reduce tons of foodwaste sent to the landï¬ll by recycling foodwaste into compost. Yardwaste and foodwaste collection increased by 2,200 tons, exceeding its goal to divert 10% of foodwaste in the ï¬rst year. One year later, 48% of residents reported that they recycle foodwaste. “We collected 34,433 tons yard- and foodwaste in 2013,” Kato says. “Overall, disposal has gone down by 5,000 to 6,000 tons,” adds Andy Torres, assistant division manager, collection.
Other goals of the program include reducing the tonnage of foodwaste sent to the landï¬ll by recycling foodwaste into compost, a nutrient-rich soil amendment and achieving a 45% participation rate of existing yard waste customers. Incorporating residential foodwaste into existing biweekly yard waste collection increased efficiency while eliminating the need for additional vehicles.
Yardwaste recycling is voluntary in Tacoma, yet the participation rate is 90%. “We do things a little different,” Torres explains. “We include the cost of recycling and yardwaste [in the overall service fee].” Customers are allowed two 96-gallon carts at no extra charge.
Ninety percent is high for organics, Kato admits. Maybe because residents don’t pay extra so they figure they might as well take advantage, he speculates. Or maybe it’s because Puget Sound citizens demand those services.
“People here look for a place to recycle,” Torres says. “If it’s recyclable, people do.” Tacoma has had recycling programs in place since the ’80s and Torres says he “can’t think of anybody in the three biggest counties not doing it.”
The maturity of the system is reaping results now, Kato believes. Other factors contribute to the success of the program, such as the no-burn laws. He convenience aspect can’t be discounted. “A commingled system is more convenient. It has helped [the program] grow.
Tacoma tries to divert in a positive way, Torres notes. With different composters around since the 1990s offering high-tech compost operation, there are few odor complaints. On the contrary, customers clamor for the end product: mulch. The highway department even uses it on highway plantings.
All these components of their program, plus an emphasis on education, have been key to its success, but the driver to start is financial, argues Mike Slevin, director of environmental services. “The incentive to recycle has to be financial. We bundle services for an affordable residential rate. That’s how you change the culture.”
Package Deal
Television and radio ads from nearby King County provided conflicting, confusing information that promoted acceptance of manufactured compostable materials that were not accepted by Tacoma’s composting processor. “We pick up yard- and straight foodwaste every other week, but not compostable packaging,” Kato says.
The problem is, Kato says, that there’s not a single standard for compostable containers. For example, a cellulose fork can take 12 months to compost. Compostable containers can affect compost quality and possibly cause compost to end in a landfill anyway. “The end product is valuable,” Kato reiterates. “It’s sold before it finishes production, so until there’s a standard and the technology is better, we’re sticking to our guns; we’re not taking it.”
They aren’t the only ones. He says Seattle collects it, but is diverting more. “Portland wants to restrict it due to problems.”
The next step is commercial foodwaste. “The residential piece is smooth; it works well,” Slevin says. “The biggest challenge is to grow the commercial side. We have to convince them.” Already in the pilot stage with schools and business, he says some small-scale operational changes would need to be made to attract the commercial market. “We’d want to change containers or clean monthly to avoid odor. That takes additional staff time, additional cost.”
Before plans can reach that level of detail, a program needs to be in place. Recycling is no good without a market, Slevin believes. “You start with the market for recycled product and work backwards from the end use; that’s key.”
There are issues when you introduce anything new; without a product, there is a risk of not being able to recycle. However, reducing the amount of garbage to dispose and lowering collection costs is an attractive outcome for restaurants and markets. “We’re looking at the savings to grind up [foodwaste] and put it in the sewer directly from the business,” Torres says. “We’re studying the impact on the sewer.”
The study is taking place at the University of Puget Sound. “We want to know if the “˜insinkerator’ has an effect or causes blockage [in the sewer],” Slevin elaborates. The waste is ground so finely, there’s little current data. If feasible, the foodwaste would go to the wastewater treatment plant, without requiring additional energy for collection. “We’re taking a look at the cost and the environmental impact on a life cycle basis,” Torres adds.
Whether or not the “insinkerator” becomes a viable option for widespread commercial use, Slevin says they are continually looking at new possibilities. “The low-hanging fruit is gone. The next step is to incentify.”
Food for Thought
Securing the support of the decision makers, as well as the citizenry, is a first step for moving forward, Bradley insists. “We need to bring all the pieces together: haulers, handlers, decision makers, stake holders. It takes time to set up the right system, but it can be cost-effective if we ensure there’s a market for the products.”
Compost can be used and sold as part of a value-added program. In some areas, energy produced by the composting process can also be used, although ultimately, the goal of diverting foodwaste is to reduce landï¬ll-generated methane. Landï¬lls are the second-highest contributors of methane to the atmosphere. Methane is 23 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
“We need to be focusing on reduction and diversion,” Bradley insists. Organics management offers a cost-effective solution that can result in high levels of diversion. “Incentives could be the driving force.” Sometimes, the opposite is just as effective. Seattle has a pay-per-volume solution and other communities have implemented pay-as-you-throw systems.
