The breakfast rush is over at the Hy-Vee grocery store hot food counter in Waukee, Iowa, and the breakfast pizza won’t be saved for tomorrow. But rather than being tossed in the trash and sent to a landfill, it joins the other organic waste this store generates in a trip to a regional recycling center.
Chaz Olson, GreenRU: “Right now up to 72% of waste coming from a city waste stream is organic material that can all be diverted from landfill. A lot of customers who have corporate sustainability goals, zero waste goals, and a lot of times their hardest object to get out of there are going to be the organic ones. They can do the plastic they can do the cardboard that can do the metal so on so forth but when it comes to organic material they don’t have a place for that to go. So GreenRU is a great option.”
Hy-Vee, which operates 242 grocery stores in eight Midwestern states, is among several companies seeking alternatives to sending organic waste to landfills. The zero waste goal is a growing trend among businesses, and has opened a market opportunity for GreenRU.
As the volume of material available for composting increases, the demand for inexpensive compost is also growing. GreenRU compost can be used for landscaping and residential locations, as well as a soil amendment in agricultural settings.
Composting is favored by customers and employees instead of sending waste to landfills.
Pat Hensley, SVP Non-foods, Hy-Vee: “We quickly learned that our employees felt very engaged in the whole sustainability effort. they knew the value of diverting to lower the methane that is coming out of the landfill. They understand the importance of lowering your carbon footprint and to work for an employer that cares about that was important to him is important to him. so we know it’s more the right thing to do is to maximize around opportunities landfill diversion.”
Employee participation is a key to diverting appropriate wastes into the compostable stream.
A grocery store generates a large amount of waste in nominal terms. While a small percentage of goods sold, a single Hy-Vee grocery store can send 30,000 pounds of material into the composting stream each month. Products are routinely pulled from shelves ahead of their “Sell By” dates. Some of the pulled products are distributed to social services groups and non-profits that focus on food-insecurity.
Pat Hensley, SVP Non-foods, Hy-Vee: “So that’s our first priority, is to get the edible unsellable to consumers who can use it. Once it gets to the point of spoilage, that it’s no longer viable for human consumption, of course, then we put it in the landfill diversion compost and that was 12 million pounds.”
Compostable materials are collected in the back of store in a separate dumpster from the landfill-bound trash. A custom built service truck empties the specialized receptacle several times a week depending on the volume of waste the store generates. Trucks travel with their own water supply for cleaning the empty dumpsters after each load.
The organic waste is eventually blended with ground wood products to achieve a specific mix that encourages the decomposition process. At this 18 acre GreenRU facility near Eddyville, Iowa windrows 700 feet long are slowly turned to aerate the organic material. Some compost recipes can become finished product in as little as 8 weeks, while others require 12-14 weeks to finish.
To read the full story, visit http://site.iptv.org/mtom/story/24459/supermarket-chain-slows-landfill-growth-turning-waste-cash.