The United States discards more food than any other country in the world: nearly 40 million tons — 80 billion pounds — every year. To tackle this issue, many cities in the US have implemented organic waste collection programs.

The food waste is estimated to be 30-40 percent of the entire US food supply and equates to 219 pounds of waste per person. This would be equivalent to every person in America throwing more than 650 average sized apples right into the garbage — or rather right into landfills, as most discarded food ends up there. In fact, food is the single largest component taking up space inside US landfills, making up 22 percent of municipal solid waste.

The city of San Francisco made organics collection mandatory in 2009. About 600 tons/day or 150 000 tons/year of organics are now being collected by Recology, the hauler in San Francisco. Recology also owns the composting facility and the landfill and continues to educate the community about waste diversion such as through its garbage art program. They also have innovative ad campaigns, such as collection trucks with 3-D imagery displaying the vehicle’s contents. The city recently passed a monumental landmark in November 2011, having diverted a total of 1 million tons of organics since the start of the program. About 20 to 40 tons of food waste (mostly commercial) are digested by the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). The remaining organics are composted at Jepsen Prairie Organics.

As a result, about 90 percent of San Francisco’s 350 000 households now have food waste composting service. A new project is expected to increase the amount of collected organics to 120 tons/day. The pilot project is planned to test less than weekly trash collection, to determine how effective it is at increasing participation and diversion numbers. Indeed, the less frequent the trash is collected, the higher is the incentive, regardless of people’s environmental inclination, to divert all putrescible food wastes into the organics contained, to avoid bad trash can smells. 

Photo by WasteManTony on Flickr