Until recently, the University of Wisconsin-Madison had a successful program to compost food waste.
Beginning in 2009, the university collected food waste in the campus cafeteria and sent it to the West Madison Agricultural Research Station for composting. In 2018, the university began bringing scrap to an anaerobic biodigester. It is now owned by Clean Fuel Partners LLC. There, the waste was converted into methane for fuel.
However, the company has changed its focus and will end its partnership with UW-Madison in 2021. Travis Blomberg, coordinator of his Campus Resources for his Office of Sustainability at UW-Madison, said the digester has stopped taking food and now uses only fertilizer as an input. The change also thwarted a citywide attempt by the city of Madison to compost food waste.
The State Department of Natural Resources estimates that 1.2 million tons of material can be diverted from landfills to composting annually. According to the DNR, about three-quarters of that is food waste, which produces methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.
Cities and universities aren’t the only ones struggling to keep large-scale food waste composting.
According to the environmental nonprofit Green Blue, only 7% of the 1,000 largest U.S. cities have municipal street composting programs that accept food waste, and only 3% of the U.S. population. .
In contrast, according to the Ontario-based Foundation for Environmental Research and Education, 71% of Canada’s population has access to on-street programs that treat organic waste and other sorted organic matter.
One waste management expert described it as Wisconsin’s “catch 22.”
Casey Lamensky, DNR’s solid waste coordinator, said, “For facilities wishing to compost build enough business and secure enough end markets for them, they need people to divert materials. And “And if one of those options fails, there aren’t many backup solutions, so it’s still early enough.”
Shutdown due to contamination
UW-Madison’s composting program experienced a series of setbacks, including contamination of the waste stream, before it was finally forced to close.
At the West Madison Agricultural Research Station, the facility’s system agitates and aerates organic waste in long lines to produce compost. But it struggles to deal with non-compostable materials such as plastic bags, packaging and metals in the food stream from the university, Bromberg said.
The university attempted to “clean up the flow” of food waste, recruiting students to conduct garbage audits in campus cafeterias and training staff to sort food waste and run it through pulper machines.
Still, campus waste created a problem. Paper containers and napkins slowed the system down, and lighter objects were blown away. The farming station also had to make costly repairs after metal silverware thrown into a compost bin punctured a tractor tire.
Blomberg said the contamination was in “front-of-house” materials, food scraps thrown away by cafeteria customers. Contamination of non-compostable items is “always a problem” in food waste collection, he said, adding that “the program was not perfect.”
So when the opportunity arose in 2018 to move the university’s composting program to an anaerobic digester (which separates food from contaminants with a depacker machine), Bromberg said that the digester operator will be able to produce food by July 2021. The university said it signed up until it stopped accepting scraps.
“We can do everything on our own, but we don’t have an industrial composter nearby that[wants]the material,” says Blomberg.
Municipal composting hits a dead end
Like UW-Madison, the City of Madison has spearheaded several food composting initiatives, all of which have proven unsuccessful.
The latest program the city has discontinued allowed residents to bring food waste to three different locations. The material was then sent to a biodigester to extract methane from the waste. The program ended after biodigesters began extracting methane exclusively from cow dung, according to Brian Johnson, coordinator of the city’s recycling.
The city had previously attempted two roadside composting programs, but they were unsuccessful as they were too labor intensive and the food waste was often contaminated. Coat hangers, towels, children’s toys and even deer heads contributed to the contamination, Johnson said.
But Madison is trying again to recycle food scraps. Thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the city opened two of his food waste drop-off sites at Farmers’ Markets this summer. These sites are sent to Fitchburg’s Neighborhood Food Solutions Farm for composting. The South Madison and East Side Farmer’s Market sites will be open through October 25th.
Although the operation is “very small,” Johnson hopes to expand the number of sites. So far, the two site initiatives have collected nearly 8,000 pounds of food scraps. It’s not much, he said, but a tonne of compost is a “win”.
Longer term, the city hopes to work with the Dane County Sustainability Campus, a proposed landfill and waste disposal project planned for the Yahara Hills Golf Course, to accommodate a large program. .
“With all the pitfalls so far, it’s hard to be optimistic, but I’m still optimistic about this,” Johnson said. It took a lot longer than I expected.”
Minnesota Leads the Way in Composting
Minnesota has a number of municipal composting programs, some of which collect organic matter from the streets. Minnesota’s Ramsey/Washington County Recycling & Energy Center plans to start collecting food waste from its streets by the end of 2023. Led by UW-Madison alum Junalie Lee.
Residents collect their food waste in heavy-duty compostable bags provided by the two counties, dispose of it in the same manner as regular trash and recycling bins, and collect it for composting at waste disposal facilities. Mr Ly said.
“Our program is unique in that it relies on existing collection infrastructure and does not require garbage haulers to change anything about how they deliver their services,” she said.
DNR solid waste coordinator Lamensky said garbage collection programs are more common in densely populated metropolitan areas, especially in coastal areas. Landfill costs can be higher than composting in these areas with limited land area.
One bright spot in Wisconsin: composting garden waste. With the state’s landfill ban on yard waste in the 1990s, more than 200 municipal composting programs were in place, turning an estimated 200,000 tons of leaf, grass clippings, and brush crumbs into compost annually. It is distributed free of charge. Ironically, that makes composting food waste within the state a more difficult business endeavor.
“[Food waste compost]is usually the more profitable product, but in situations where there is a lot of garden waste compost, even if it is high quality compost, It’s hard to buy. It’s free,” she said.
Wisconsin’s lack of infrastructure has also caused local government programs like Madison’s to stall after they started. Repeated efforts to compost food can confuse residents and increase the likelihood of contaminating the recycling waste stream, Ramensky said. Her advice: When in doubt, throw it out. .
Subscription services are the norm
Madison has failed to maintain a citywide composting program, but there are private companies that turn food waste into soil for a fee.
There are at least three services available in the Madison area: Curbside Compostor, Earth Stew, and Green Box Compost. Green Box founder and CEO Ben Stanger launched the company earlier this year to meet the growing needs in the region. Green Box charges members $24 per month.
“There are a lot of young people who think they have sustainability[as a goal]in general, but they also have food and food waste in particular as something they want to focus on,” Stanger said. “And we want to provide this to them in a convenient, easy and inexpensive way.”
Subscription-based services like Green Box continue to outperform local government programs across the state, Lamensky said. This is because private companies can “move more agilely” and avoid bureaucracy that could slow down implementation, he said.
DNR seeks to help Wisconsin municipalities by providing technical support and waiving screening and standard licensing fees to encourage startup programs, she said.
Some states and local governments have state laws that encourage diversion of food waste from landfills. Minnesota has a legislative goal to recycle 75% of its waste by 2030. Wisconsin does not have a required benchmark, but the DNR has a goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.
Despite the challenges, Lamensky hopes more municipalities will try it out.
“As we have more examples here in Wisconsin, we hope other local governments will see it done effectively and be ready to follow suit,” she said. said.
Tackling waste at source
Through a pilot program with the Agricultural Research Station, UW-Madison is exploring various options for bringing composting back onto campus. Unlike previous arrangements, Bromberg said materials are limited to “back of the house” food scraps from the university’s four largest food waste generators. It accounts for more than half of all food waste.
But the pilot program is only a temporary solution, and the university’s proposals to vendors to find long-term composting facilities have so far been unsuccessful, Bromberg said.
Universities are also exploring other ways to reduce food waste. For example, a student team secured funding for food waste reduction technology through the Green Fund. This is an initiative that funds student-led projects that address environmental issues on the UW Madison campus.
The project installs digital scanners in trash cans to analyze food being discarded and help universities coordinate food purchases.
“This is an easy, simple, cost-effective solution that not only saves the university a lot of money, but also some of the problems of generating waste and ending up in landfills. I will,” said the business.
Bromberg agreed that minimizing waste is the best and easiest solution.
“The bigger question is why are we creating so much food waste in the first place? That’s a valid question.”
Wisconsin Watch Reports intern Erin Gretzinger contributed to this report. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All work created, published, posted or distributed by Wisconsin Watch does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of his UW-Madison or its affiliates.
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