By Pax Rasmussen, Catalyst Magazine, September, 2006.
"Overflowing blue recycling bins await pickup outside nearly every house in Salt Lake, and most places I visit have bright blue pails collecting office paper. Are people finally getting with the recycling program? Still, though, there is something we throw away in huge quantities and hardly ever think about: food waste.
Americans throw away 1.3 pounds of food per day–over 474 pounds per person per year, according to a study by the University of Arizona. Multiply that by 299,564,030, the number of people in this country as of 10:30a.m., August 25, and you get a huge amount of waste. Fruit, vegetables and dairy make up the biggest percentage, and restaurants contribute the most waste by far.
What can we do to help alleviate some of this massive waste? I sat down with Eric Bell, an expert at wise use in the kitchen and head chef at Squatters and Zola restaurants. I asked him what these establishments do with the food waste they produce. He merely smiled and replied, "What waste?"
Squatter’s has been a slow food (as opposed to fast food) advocate for some time; the restaurant has won awards for sustainable business practices. Well–known for their superb microbrews, they are also one of the first restaurants in Salt Lake to focus strongly on healthy ingredients (like non–hydrogenated fryer grease) and whole foods.
Obviously, the first things to do are reduce and reuse. According to Bell, Squatters’ food cost works out to be about 22% of total income, while the industry average is over 33%. This is particularly amazing considering most of their ingredients are organic.
Bell attributes this to the cooking practices he has implemented. For instance, the broth that makes their soups so good is homemade, incorporating celery tops, onion skins and carrot peels from the fresh vegetables they cook with, as well as turkey and chicken bones and carcasses. They turn their potato peels into flour which they add to the dough for rolls and other breads, which makes a tasty and more nutritious product.
Newfangled? "This is the traditional way of cooking," Bell says. The result is that Squatters and Zola have little to no waste coming out of their kitchen; in the process they save money. It’s more labor–intensive, but "I’d rather give a guy a job and do things the old way than waste that money buying processed foods and throwing stuff away," says Bell.
Squatters finds uses for other restaurant by–products, as well, which keep them out of the waste stream. Spent grain from beer production at Squatters goes to pig farmers as feed or is composted. Bell also used it to xeriscape his yard without having to dig up all the grass: He spread it directly on the lawn, topped it with cardboard and buried it all in a load of compost. The result was a high–temperature composting of the grain and grass underneath. He then planted on top of this. Even the old fryer grease is reused, in the Squatters biodiesel truck. According to Bell, if you’re calling it waste, you’re not being creative enough.
We spoke with employees at a number of area restaurants and coffee shops, most of whom said they throw away all of their food waste. Two Starbucks give away their coffee grounds to the public on a first come, first serve basis. Sage’s used to give their kitchen compost to Wasatch Community Gardens, but the gardening group doesn’t take it anymore.
Denise Cerreta from One World Café shares Bell’s philosophy and incorporates some of the same practices. One World uses ingredients that other restaurants waste to make broths and stocks.
Randy Wirth, co–owner and roastmaster at Cafe Ibis in Logan has found a solution for his restaurant’s waste: Compost it. Ibis worked out an arrangement with Logan’s green waste program to accept their plant–based waste and coffee grounds and turn it into high quality compost that is sold back to the public to pay for the program.
For a nominal charge, the Ibis also sells used coffee grounds (great for rose gardens and for other acid–loving plants) and chaff (a byproduct of coffee roasting) to the public for home composting and gardening. Cerreta has her own organic compost operation at the garden that grows many of One World’s veggies. Kathryn Webb, owner of Nostalgia Café in downtown Salt Lake, uses much of the coffee grounds produced in her shop in her home garden.
Cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and New York have revolutionary programs to deal with this waste. San Francisco’s green waste program is by far the most advanced, accepting pretty much all discarded food products, including meat and dairy. It provides businesses and residences alike with special green bins in which to collect any organic matter. Each month their program processes 5,200 tons of food scraps from the San Francisco Bay area, turning that material into rich compost that is sold to farms and vineyards in the area.
How to compost your own kitchen waste:
Start small. Coffee grounds are a good source of slow–release nitrogen (comparable to grass clippings): put them around trees, rosebushes and in the garden. No need to compost, just chuck them out in the garden, coffee filter and all. (The more fastidious might like to tuck them under plants.)
Collecting other food matter is easy, too. A bucket with a lid works great for collecting anything you’d throw away, either during cooking or what's left on the plate. (Meat and dairy shouldn't be added to this bucket unless you’re a highly skilled composter.) If you’re worried about smell and messy cleanup, compostable bin liners can be purchased online.
Water the pile occasionally, and "turn" it. (You’ll need a pitchfork or shovel.) If you don’t do this, the waste will eventually decompose, but it sure won’t be a "proper" compost pile.
Making a compost bin is simple. Check out www.digitalseed.com for plans to make an easy compost bin using four wooden pallets. Western Gardens Center also sells an easy–to–assemble metal wire bin for around $36. If you don’t have a yard to compost in, there are options for patio composting. The Urban Composter is a 71–gallon fully enclosed plastic drum on a stand (also available at Western Gardens. You just rotate it on its stand to ’turn’ the compost. These are pricier, at $269.
With either system, remember that it’s important to have the proper carbon–to–nitrogen mix. The ideal mix is about 30 parts carbon to one part nitrogen. Food scraps, categorized as "green" materials, are generally about 20 to one, so just make sure to throw in some "brown" materials, such as dry leaves, which are at around 50 to one, or sawdust, at 500 to one."
Resources:
Information about San Francisco’s green waste program: www.sunsetscavenger.com/sf_green_toter.htm
Information about how to compost, how to build your own bins, etc.: www.digitalseed.com/composter/index.html
Urban Composter System: www.urbangardencenter.com
