When a restaurant became concerned about the amount of food waste they were generating, they needed help in diverting their waste streams from landfills.
By Sonny Burkett
Corporations are now seeking to find and hire Sustainability Managers for positions that didn’t exist in the corporate structure 10 years ago. Eliminating putrescible waste is going to be on the critical list of any new hire responsibilities and the job description may or may not include “dumpster diving”.
I was one of the first to successfully commercialize food waste dehydrators back in 2008 selling Korean manufactured machines to OEM customers in the USA. I thought that sharing my experiences with anyone that is just starting his/her new job as the Sustainability Manager might benefit from some of the things I learned. There are two choices to make today for onsite reduction of food waste—dehydrators and “digesters” that use microbes or a vitamin mix to break down the food waste.
There are countless articles written about the advantages and disadvantages of both so it is not the intention of this article to offer suggestions as to what decision makes sense for any food operator. I have always believed that dehydrators were the best of the two technologies even though dehydrators are more expensive to purchase and operate, they do not use any fresh water nor do they emit water into the sewer system that may contain high levels of BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand), TSS (Total suspended solids) and FOG (Fat, oil and grease).
Food Waste Management Concerns
One of my first customers in 2008 was a chain restaurant in California who saw an article in Food Service Equipment that featured a dehydrator at the Marriott Hotel in Torrance, CA on the front cover. This particular restaurant had their dumpsters in the back of the restaurant within 20 feet of where the valet’s opened the doors for their customers and even though the dumpster was behind a pull down metal door, there were still concerns about the odor, flies and possible rodents coming to the area.
While the management expressed concerns about all the these issues, they were primarily worried about disrupting their normal workflow as this restaurant operated with military precision and everyone had duties to do at given times every day. The management scheduled a general meeting with the employees and explained that they were contemplating purchasing a dehydrator to eliminate food waste onsite and out of landfills and everyone bought into the program.
The First Steps of the Program
The first part of the program included a waste analysis. The restaurant employees captured all the food waste in buckets and weighed it to determine what size machine would be needed. The employees actually spread out a tarp on the ground outside at the close of the day and emptied the food waste and surprisingly found out that some of their food portion servings were wasted more than others so a quick change in the menu provided some quick food purchase savings while simultaneously cutting back on food waste.
The management estimated that the price of the dehydrator would have a positive payback within 24 months by the reduction of their waste hauling costs (this particular restaurant was paying $650 a month for a 3 cubic yard dumpster being picked up six days a week). The restaurant was able to get rid of one 3 cubic yard dumpster leaving one for general waste.
This customer saved an additional $125 per month since the large heavy duty black plastic garbage bags were no longer used as they switched to slim jims and washed them out at the end of the day after depositing the food waste in the dehydrator. The restaurant was also able to salvage their cardboard that was previously just tossed into the dumpster along with the food waste contaminating it, making tne cardboard unrecyclable; that, in turn, created another revenue stream.
Environmentally Responsible
After several months, the management informed our sales team that there was no interruption to the general workflow and that all the employees had that “good feeling” about their small part in doing something good for the environment. The residual 10 to 15 percent output from the dehydrator was dry and had no odor and was discarded in the remaining dumpster, but the overall effect was reducing the food waste going into the landfills by an estimated 40 tons per year.
Other Locations
There are many customers still using these older technology dehydrator machines, like the Anaheim Convention Center, the La Costa, Hillcrest and Wilshire Country Clubs. These customers used to buy organics to mix with their chemical fertilizer and then switched to using the sterile biomass from their dehydrators again saving monies every month. They filtered out the non-organics from the left over biomass and shredded it before mixing with their chemical fertilizer.
Jim Tripp, the manager at the Anaheim Convention Center, has two older dehydrators processing just the pre-prep in the morning from vegetables and fruits processing about 500lbs of food waste daily, which results in about 65 to 75lbs of this sterile biomass collected daily. They use it for their organic vegetable gardens that they grow on their convention center roof tops and what they don’t use is given to landscapers who use the biomass (mixing it 14:1 with the soil14-parts soil to 1-part biomass) all around the City of Anaheim.
In Orange County, CA the Fairmont hotel has an older dehydrator that processes 250lbs of food waste daily. They collect the biomass in bio-degradable bags and once a week, a local farmer picks up a pallet load to till back into his farmland renourishing his fields. There are many other examples of dehydrator users who have found a zero waste solution for their food waste.
Dehydrators are basically sophisticated clothes dryers. Food waste, like the human body is about 80 to 85 percent water. The food waste is heated at temperatures around 180 degrees F killing all bacteria and pathogens. The water is pulled out in the form of steam and condensed back into sterile condensate. The water going down the drain from the dehydrator has no TSS or FOG, but may carry some small amounts of BOD. However, the BOD content has never measured high enough to cause issues with any waste water treatment facilities as compared to food waste digester systems that use fresh water and microbes/enzymes to break down the food waste sending gray water down the drain.
Hungry Giant Recycling over the past seven years has invented the many innovative features in its machines that have been found to process food waste 20 to 25 percent faster than the older dehydrators in use today saving considerable energy costs. Hungry Giant in Australia has more than 50 installations in Sydney alone at some of the most prestigious sites like the largest IMAX theater, Monash University, Darling Quarter Commonwealth Bank Building, HSBC Building with 23 restaurants and nine coffee shops, State Theater, Hurstville Central Shopping Center, Australia Square, Rio Tinto mining Company and the Sydney Fish Market.
Hungry Giant Recycling also just introduced the world’s first ON-SITE PCT patent pending wood pallet breaker (AutoBreaker) that reduces wood pallet hauling volumes by up to 90 percent (one pallet every 90 to 100 seconds). The MSRP is $20,000 and is manufactured in Wisconsin with first deliveries scheduled for mid-October. Hungry Giant also introduced another first and unique continuous OCC (cardboard/shrink wrap) baler that will reduce labor costs by a minimum of one hour per eight-hour work shift.
The landscape for different food waste recycling technologies is changing fast and food operators have the burden of determining what company, technology and system is best for their site. Caveat Emptor always is the best rule. | WA
Sonny Burkett is the President and Co-Founder of Hungry Giant Recycling Inc. (Rocklin, CA), a company that was formed to introduce pre-emptive food waste recycling systems from Australia where the Hungry Giant is the dominant market share leader with a new hybrid technology that can dehydrate food waste on site by 15 to 20 percent faster than the competition saving electricity. Sonny can be reached at (949) 795-0143 or visit www.hgrecycling.com and its partner company www.autobaler.com.au.