Sustainability begins with humans and keeping everyone safe at the point of initial collection and discard—the receptacle. Certified compostable bags keep organics, recyclables or waste collection in good intentions.
Kiran RajBhandary
Organic waste is at the forefront of capturing, diverting, processing and recycling as more companies and municipalities embrace zero waste initiatives. Sustainable practices are critical all the way from a product’s birth, packaging and use, to its demise with reuse, recycling or upcycling becoming a final destination.
Organic waste is a significant segment of all waste created in the U.S. and now worldwide. Each of us will waste 241 pounds of edible food each year representing 60 million metric tons wasted in the U.S. With many in the world going hungry each day, this news is sad but true and subject to change. With a value of more than $165B, and 32 million metric tons ending up in landfills at a cost of $1.5B to local governments, “subject to change” needs to become “must change”. With only 5 percent diverted from landfills and incinerators, the EPA estimates that more food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in our everyday trash, constituting 21.6 percent of discarded municipal solid waste.
Many challenges present themselves within the existing system of waste management priorities—waste diversion, collection, waste processing, contamination of recyclables, separating waste streams and carbon omissions, to name a few. Organic waste is no different with reducing the volume of surplus food, donating food to feed hungry people, creating animal feed, energy conversion and composting—all better alternatives than ending up in a landfill.
Composting’s Economic Value
Inefficiencies exist throughout the entire food supply chain coupled with these myriad disposal processes, but food or organic recycling is a rapidly growing solution whose time has come. With many ways to capture the inherent value—environmentally, societally and economically—each of these are value drivers for sustainability as a whole.
Consistent communication and education is an important aspect of all organics, recycling or sustainability initiatives. Composting has been around many years and is simple in how it functions. Microorganisms eat organic material and within a managed or controlled environment, the material becomes compost. Proper composting has additional benefits as it kills harmful pathogens through a natural process, generating heat making the compost material safer and nutrient rich for the environment and the next intended use. A pathogen-free compost mixed with other soils provides significant advantages for agricultural endeavors.
However, when trapped in a landfill, organic waste emits greenhouse gases and produces liquid by-products as they decompose, that can manifest as leachate. Reducing health and other environmental risks is important with organics recycling. By diverting organic waste from a landfill, it extends the service life of existing landfills and it also decreases health risks that are often associated with building or expanding landfills over periods of time. Separating food waste makes a lot of sense. One can incinerate organics to generate energy, use anaerobic digestion to create and capture biogas (a clean renewable energy source) or one can compost it—each of these methods emits less harmful greenhouse gas omission than ending up in a landfill.
Composting produces a cost savings including lower tipping fees compared to typical landfill fees and it creates valuable organic material. Efficiencies gained by diverting organic waste from landfills are many, including lower environmental impact and increased overall economic value.
Organic waste is typically produced in either a residential or commercial environment. Making it convenient, easy and somewhat pleasant to capture is an important consideration. With many known advantages to composting, ongoing educational efforts of this practice are critical to establishing better habits all around.
Capturing Organic Waste
There are challenges capturing organic waste using bag liners to contain and aggregate waste. Compostable material is very heavy. If certified compostable bags are not used to contain organic waste, this compromises the purpose of capturing organic waste. The goal is to reduce organic waste in landfills, not increase traditional plastic bags with organic waste in landfills. Using certified compostable bags helps reduce the number of organics inside conventional plastic bags going into a landfill while providing a natural biodegradable advantage for organic waste.
There are a number of benefits to using these bags. Often these bags are translucent, allowing the contents to be viewed, which reinforces and influences adherence to recycling standards. These bags often allow for breathability, which reduces the water vapor exiting the bag and minimizes moisture content, which in turn reduces odors and anaerobic conditions that might otherwise present themselves.
Compostable bags are more hygienic, safer, efficient and help keep waste receptacles cleaner. Certified compostable bags reduce plastic contamination within the environment and composting supply chain. With organics recycling a major component of zero waste initiatives, certified compostable products deliver value to programs within municipalities, facilities and private industry. Bags can carry messages on them reinforcing behavior, inspiring better participation, developing positive habits and spreading the message to make collection easier, cleaner and safer.
Building Awareness
The segmentation of waste at the point of discard and during sorting after pickup continues to be an issue, especially when coupled with the contamination of recyclables, decreasing (or increasing waste streams), and rising awareness for capturing organic waste. China has clamped down on their contamination policies (historically they accepted 4 to 5 percent impurities, now less than 1 percent) placing strict controls and requirements on what they will or will not accept primarily in paper, metals, fibers and plastics, causing significant challenges for the U.S. waste industry, municipalities and the public as values sink and costs rise to recycle. Organic waste can be a contaminant to these waste streams, so segmenting, collecting and capturing it is important to the entire waste management chain.
Numerous organizations are grappling with receptacle messaging standards in conjunction with integrating certified compostable bags and developing partnerships to raise awareness to expand organic waste capturing program participants. RecycleAcrossAmerica.org is focused on standardizing all receptacle labeling. EcoSafe, BASF, Heritage Bag Company and others offer certified compostable bags. Companies are forming whom focus on recycling items once thought of as impossible to recycle, such as TerraCycle. Who knew makeup, tampons and cigarette butts were valuable recyclable items?
Municipalities and industry partners, such as the cities of Eugene, OR, Phoenix, AZ, and the Council for Responsible Sport are also engaging and building community awareness for organics recycling and sustainability. Eugene, OR, has embarked upon the Love Food, Not Waste initiative. Local garbage haulers, commercial composters, the City of Eugene and area businesses teamed up to make sure that food scraps turn into valuable compost instead of taking up space in landfill. The garbage hauler provides businesses with free internal food waste bins and a food waste collection container, and arranges a collection frequency that fits the needs of the business. This enables commercial customers to separate meat, bones, fish, dairy, baked goods, fruits and vegetables, certain types of food-soiled paper, yard debris, and plant trimmings from garbage service.
Eugene has also partnered with the Council for Responsible Sport to develop a pioneering Responsible Event Framework helping event stakeholders adopt and achieve objectives that apply a triple bottom line concept of weighing social and environmental results of decisions alongside economic ones. The Responsible Event Framework is available for all to use for free.
Development of the framework included input and leading practices from cities including Phoenix, Boulder, San Jose (CA), Washington, D.C., Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Additionally, leading private and public organizations including the LA28 Olympic committee on sustainability and Legacy, Waste Management, AHM Brands, M Culinary Concepts, Travel Lane County, and Chicago Events Management helped shape the framework.
Reimagine Phoenix has a citywide goal of diverting 40 percent of trash from the landfill by the year 2020 and is enhancing current city solid waste programs encouraging more sustainable practices, such as recycling and composting. They are also entering into private and public sector partnerships to uncover more solutions, increasing communication and education about diversion and sustainability efforts to residents and to businesses.
In pursuing both human and environmental sustainability, we are enthused with the number of approaches to divert organics, how they are put to good use, the reversal of recyclable contamination, and challenging the norm when it comes to what is recyclable. For us, sustainability begins with humans and keeping everyone safe at the point of initial collection and discard—the receptacle. Certified compostable bags keep organics, recyclables or waste collection in good intentions.
Kiran (Raj) Rajbhandary is CEO and Co-founder of EZ Dump Commercial, Inc. an innovative design and engineering company based in Phoenix, AZ. They are the creators of SmartcanMax™, a patented waste, recycling and organics receptacle offering. Ten years ago, EZ Dump Commercial’s co-founder Jack Fisher struggled to get a bag of yard clippings out of a large receptacle. He could not remove the liner bag due to suction and vacuum. The bag tore, the clippings blew across the yard, he kicked the can, it landed upside down, and a revolutionary invention was born. His frustration lives on—as a safer solution. Raj can be reached through his company Web site at www.ezdumpcommercial.com.