Recycling
First of Three Parts
Food Waste Diversion: The Next Frontier for ‘Waste’ Management?
Noel Lyons and Lynn Lucas
Food waste diversion has been dubbed the “next frontier” by recycling industry leaders. It is a dominant subject at recycling and energy conferences and a major focus of many state agencies and advocacy groups. Food waste is also linked to the promise of bioenergy, a hope fueled by strong government support, including credits and other subsidies.
However, so far, this high level of enthusiasm and interest in food waste recycling has not yielded meaningful results, and food waste still represents the single largest fraction of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) stream finding its way into landfills and incinerators. According to EPA as shown in Chart 1, the U.S. generated almost 35 million tons of food waste in 2010, roughly 14 percent of the total MSW stream. With only 3 percent recovered or recycled, the remaining 34 million tons make up the single largest fraction of the total MSW stream to be landfilled or incinerated.
An Economical Vision
Despite this lack of progress, one should not conclude that food waste recycling is an unrealistic vision. In fact, food waste recycling is inevitable and will happen for two reasons. The first is economics related to compost use. Once processed, stabilized organic waste in the form of compost is a valuable product destined to play a critical role in food production and food security, natural resource conservation and sustainability. In recent years, compost manufacturers have seen a slow-but-steady climb in the dollar value of their products. This has allowed them to remain viable in a highly-competitive waste management market because the revenues from compost sales have helped offset rising costs on the organics services side of the business.
The second driver is also economic. The attractive cost—benefit ratio of food waste recycling for high volume generators. There is only one reason why some of the biggest names in the foods business have joined the groundswell of support for organics diversion and other zero waste initiatives, and it is not environmental altruism. Pulling organics from the waste stream makes economic sense and puts us on the final lap to achieving zero waste. Once organics are diverted, the remaining material is clean and easy to separate, thus removing the last major challenge to eliminating landfilling as we know it today.
Zero waste is very attainable. The European model of “no unstable organic matter in landfills” will be met or surpassed here in the U.S. when we succeed in food waste recycling. It is no longer a matter of if, but when. An important question is will present-day owners and operators of landfills and collection companies be onboard or still standing on the platform when the organics recycling train leaves the station? Food waste is being diverted outside of traditional systems and channels by a new breed of enviropreneur who doesn’t always rely on the infrastructure support of transfer stations and municipal collection systems. Once this group hits its stride, food waste won’t be the only garbage tossed into the organics bin. Materials like dirty paper, waxed cardboard, natural-fiber textiles and biodegradable diapers can be safely and efficiently recycled using modern, high-rate composting processes, including materials like biodegradable plastics that cannot be recycled by most outdoor windrow operations.
Poised for Growth
Recently-released figures suggest that the average landfill tipping fee in the U.S. is approaching $50/ton. When it hits that mark, food waste diversion will represent a potential $1.65 billion annual revenue loss for traditional disposal. Generation rates of biodegradable materials (an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the total MSW stream) are often of sufficient volumes to justify the cost and challenges of source-separation and diversion by even small and medium-sized generators. A highly-motivated, entrepreneurial private sector is bypassing co-mingled collection and MSW transfer stations for “greener” options—no landfill bans or other legislated mandates required.
Over 40 percent of paper and paperboard, wood, food scraps and yard trimmings were recovered in 2010 in the U.S., but that means nearly 60 percent is still being wasted when 100 percent of these materials could be efficiently and affordably recycled through composting. The commercial composting industry is poised for the exponential growth required to successfully manage these organics.
Leveraging Existing Assets
Basic, no-frills windrow operations of the industry’s infancy are being replaced by advanced, high-rate processes and industrial-scale, environmentally-secure buildings designed for product manufacture—not disposal. Advanced technologies and professional management ensure quality products of high dollar and horticultural value. Tight buildings and biofiltration systems allow such facilities to operate in urban environments close to feedstocks and product markets, cutting transportation costs.
When compared to outdoor windrow composting operations (where long, uncovered piles of blended materials are turned periodically with a windrow turner), indoor, high-rate, industrial plants occupy just one-tenth of the real estate required for outdoor windrow facilities and solve a myriad of other intrinsic problems of outdoor windrow composting. These advanced facilities are designed to handle all organics not otherwise recycled, co-composting MSW, water treatment residuals, industrial by-products (including residuals from bioenergy/biofuel production) and agricultural organics of all moisture levels at one facility using one process.
Designs and systems are not the only aspects of composting to benefit from two decades of private-sector innovation. The economics associated with the operation of modern, high-rate systems have improved to the point where composting tipping fees remain competitive with disposal, thanks to more efficient operations, knowledgeable management, and revenues derived from the aggressive sales and marketing of premium compost products.
Building new collection and processing systems for organics outside of the existing waste management infrastructure could take years. Is that really sensible when the existing waste management industry is uniquely positioned to become a catalyst for change? It already owns or controls important resources like collection routes, ideal sites and raw materials. Leveraging these existing assets makes more sense than building a new system that would, for all intents and purposes, merely mirror the old.
Benefits
Impelled by a new era of environmental awareness, the waste management industry in the U.S. has made a relatively swift transition from open dumps and burn pits to environmentally-secure disposal, a tremendous accomplishment placing it among the best in the world. Now, it has an opportunity to lead the transition from a disposal-based society to one that recycles as a first choice. On economic merits alone, compost manufacturing trumps disposal. But modern composting also creates jobs—one for every 3,000 tons processed. At a time when the nation is crying out for more employment opportunities, continuing to bury or burn more than 29,000 decent jobs every year is not a smart use of economic or environmental resources.
But while creating jobs, reducing costs and avoiding the generation of greenhouse gases and leachate are certainly good reasons to embrace composting, however, they are secondary to the real potential of organics recycling—using compost manufactured from MSW organics. Compost is 40 to 50 percent organic matter (OM), a critical constituent of topsoil. The topsoil layer supports important soil functions, but human activities now deplete topsoil much faster than nature can replace it. What passes in many locales as “soil” is actually subsoil, a near-barren substrate incapable of supporting a healthy soil ecosystem.
As a result, soils no longer function as they should. While humans have figured out how to grow food without good soil, there is no substitute for soil organic matter when it comes to managing our most critical survival resource—water—and that is what has so many people looking at the organic fraction of MSW as a resource instead of waste.
Compost is the most practical, efficient and affordable means of replacing topsoil. It is 40 to 50 percent organic matter, and when used to raise soil OM content to at least 5 percent:
Holds many times its weight in water, reducing stormwater runoff 30 to 50 percent.
Improves percolation, cutting irrigation requirements by 30 to 50 percent.
Improves nutrient uptake, reducing the amount of chemical fertilizers needed to grow turfgrass, ornamentals and food/fiber crops, typically, about 50 percent.
Is biologically active, replenishing the microbial populations responsible for disease suppression and nutrient uptake.
Eases compaction, encouraging stronger root systems and water infiltration.
Filters/degrades pollutants, improving water quality.
What might a 50 percent cut in runoff volumes do for cities and towns facing massive infrastructure investments to manage stormwater? What impact would a 50 percent reduction in pollutant-laden stormwater have on threatened bays and estuaries? Would a 50 percent reduction in irrigation requirements ease food shortages during times of drought?
As a management strategy, MSW composting results in environmental and economic benefits reaching far beyond its value as a recycling technology. Modern lifestyles and industrial processing promise an abundant, ever-renewing supply of raw materials, making compost manufacture and compost use a closed loop, sustainable system.
Financing
The final ingredient in the organics recycling mix is financing. Public-sector owners and operators are strapped for cash at a time when existing infrastructure is aging. However, companies with a history of successful composting operations have financing, and when partnered with public and private entities with ideal sites at landfills, transfer stations and wastewater treatment facilities, provide the final building block eliminating the need for publicly-financed capital projects.
Feedstocks, technologies, expertise, sites and financing—all the crucial elements already exist to exponentially expand processing volumes of organics within just a handful of years through market forces alone. Together, compost manufacturers and the owners of waste management assets hold in their collective hands all that is required to reach high diversion rates for food waste and other organics. The challenge now is to fuse these individual components into a cohesive system.
Next month’s article will focus on how do we get there from here?
Noel Lyons is president and co-founder of McGill Environmental Systems (Harrells, NC), a pioneer in the establishment of indoor, industrial-scale composting as a revenue-producing service and recycling technology for mainstream waste management.
Lynn Lucas is a project developer for McGill Environmental Systems, specializing in business development, communications, marketing and branding.
They can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or visit the Web site at www.mcgillcompost.com.