Food Waste Landfill Diversion in Chicagoland
By Jonathan Jackson
1,424 words
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Table of Contents
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This essay explains the paths of food waste in Chicagoland, how it is transported, and identifies several strategies and roles integral to managing food waste landfill diversion.
Overview
If food waste is intentionally kept out of a landfill it can be reused in the local food system or harnessed for energy. Keeping it out of the landfill thus has important environmental and economic benefits which are worth investment. To maximize these benefits, we must isolate the waste stream and transport the “waste” away from the landfill and toward alternate end-users.
Food waste is comprised of grain, produce, meat, and dairy which is undesired for distribution or consumption. Food waste is generated during the growth and production of food, through distribution and sale, during preparation and consumption.
Landfill diversion is any strategy which directs “waste” away from the landfill and toward an alternate destination. Alternate destinations for food waste include windrow composting sites, commercial-grade composting facilities, combined animal feeding operations, and anaerobic digesters.
In Chicagoland, when food is not wanted there are three options:
Throw it away: Food waste is thrown away when a landfill is the only destination available. Food waste is also thrown away when it must be destroyed, such as in a recall.
Donate it: Food waste is often donated when it is undesired or considered surplus inventory. For example, if a product is expiring, a grocery store may donate the product to a food pantry or food bank. Similarly, food manufacturers may enter into agreements with organizations to distribute surplus inventory.
Critically, if the recipient of a donation cannot use the product, the product will be either thrown away or reused.
Reuse it: Food waste can be reused if it is directed away from the landfill. It can be reused in composting for fertilizer, as livestock feed, or as feedstock for energy. In all cases, reusing food waste depends on isolating the waste stream and transporting the “waste” toward an alternate end-user (i.e., someone who will use the food waste outside of a landfill).
In Chicagoland, if a resident or business does not want their food waste to be dumped in a landfill then they will pay an additional waste hauling service. These hauling services create the local food waste stream. To increase this waste stream, the major hurdle is to encourage participation because participation costs money. Minor hurdles are to educate and remind users about contamination.
Procedurally, people are good at sorting food from other waste types. Generally:
Residential and professional kitchens yield food waste with minimal contamination, as it is standard to remove food packaging and contaminates before preparation and cooking.
Dining halls, cafeterias, and offices yield minimal to moderate contamination. Bins for food waste are likely public facing and people may add utensils and packaging. Using signs can help manage contamination.
Grocery stores, delis, and markets yield moderate to high contamination. These stores typically do not remove any packaging prior to disposal.
Producers, like farms, may plow undesired yield back into the field for reuse.
Manufacturers may destroy contaminated product before it is at market or recall product if it has been distributed.
Food waste transportation in Chicagoland is couched in a waste removal mentality and adheres to waste disposal operations. Generally, waste goes to the landfill by way of tip sites and transfer stations. These locations are staging areas for sorting and secondary transport. Food waste haulers make decisions on where to deliver based on distance, pricing, and waste contamination tolerance.
Most food waste haulers in Chicagoland are not processing food waste into compost or feedstock for energy, i.e., they are not alternate end-users. All haulers collect a fee to pick up waste and most pay a fee to deliver the waste at a tip site or transfer station.
Customers of compost haulers do not have control over where their food waste is delivered. If they want such control, they must transport it themselves or specify such in a contract, like a Waste-to-Energy contract.
Some alternate end-users, like commercial-grade composting facilities, own vehicles and offer hauling services. For example, a composting facility may use trucks to haul waste from a grocery store. This is one way food waste is diverted from the landfill and transported directly to an alternate end-user.
The overarching goal is to divert food waste from the landfill and toward alternate end-users. Currently, business-to-business diversion solutions require Just-in-Time delivery from the business to the end-user. If a business generates more waste than a user can accept, this will require the participation of existing tip sites or transfer stations to hold waste for later acquisition.
Community solutions require more sites for reuse and storage. Be it compost sites, anaerobic digesters, transfer stations, tips sites, or others, more storage helps decentralize the Chicagoland waste conveyor belt which expedites “waste” to the landfill.
Strategies and roles to nurture landfill diversion include:
Prioritizing storage options for food waste.
Slowing the flow of waste to the landfill requires more real estate dedicated to storage, reuse, or staging for secondary transport.
Much like a transfer station or tip site, some corporate warehouses use distribution centers (DC) to aggregate materials. Carboard boxes and plastics, sorted by polymer, are returned from a warehouse to the DC and back to another warehouse for reuse. This saves on expenses. DCs even aggregate this “waste” and book the value because they ultimately treat this material as an asset and not a liability. They sell it, rather than pay for disposal.
If a DC does this with inorganic waste it can do it with organic waste.
Increasing partnerships directly between haulers and existing alternate end-users.
Hauling food waste directly to an alternate end-user ensures an alternate use and avoids potential cross contamination at a tip site or transfer station.
Facilitating outreach between haulers and end-users can nurture partnerships.
Increasing participation by articulating the value of food waste.
To communicate the value of waste, the word “waste” is seldom used.
The Illinois Food Scrap Coalition replaces waste with scrap. Then, they meet to discuss the hauling of food scrap.
Business solutions link the impact of food waste to business terms like shrinkage, which is an inventory accounting term.
Waste-to-Energy is an exception, but the emphasis is on energy.
Whatever the word, once understood something is not inherently waste, companies and people are more likely to change behavior so they can steward, sell, or exchange the “waste”.
Brokering exchange between food waste buyers, sellers, and haulers.
The value of waste is subjective. An exchange might be made for cash, to satisfy corporate sustainability goals, or to acquire credits.
Coordinating logistics for the transportation of food waste.
The economics of compost hauling do not necessarily complement the purpose of landfill diversion.
Waste-to-Energy hauling contracts reframe the value of the “waste” being hauled and offer an assurance of alternate use.
Increasing consumer analysis with predictive analytics.
Point of sale data for perishable items, like produce, can be analyzed to help inform demand planning and purchase forecasting.
By ordering accurate amounts of inventory, the store will throw away less inventory. Presumably, this is a ground-up approach which will taper producer and manufacturer production appetites.
The transformation of a waste stream to a supply chain is an act of reimagining. What we want to do is collect our food waste and supply it to as many different end-users as we can. This is the mentality of a delivery service, not of waste removal.
Coordinating the transportation of food waste to an alternate end-user is the lynchpin of this endeavor. There is no shortage of food waste, nor of businesses or residents who comprehend the value of landfill diversion. However, there are precious few businesses or residents who also own vehicles to steward their waste. Hauling contracts which frame the value of “waste” are important tools to bridge this gap.
The path of least resistance is to engage companies already attempting landfill diversion and to steer them toward local solutions. In conveying the importance of food waste landfill diversion, the term landfill footprint can be used. Analogous to carbon footprint, companies, communities, and residents may seek to reduce their annual landfill footprint by shipping their food waste to local Chicagoland users and not the landfill.