REACHING OUT TO THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

In Business, January-February, 2006, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 14

Oregon program works with haulers to reach over 50 companies that include supermarkets, restaurants and institutional kitchens - plus firms at the
Portland airport.

Ann Sihler

THE LATEST ISSUE of the Association of Oregon Recyclers newsletter (AOR) headlines a report, “Portland Businesses Capture Scraps for Food Composting.” Since February, 2005, explains the article, Portland companies that generate significant amounts of food waste have had an alternative to sending leftovers, kitchen scraps, and food-soiled paper to the landfill. Instead, through the Portland Composts! program, they can have their food waste collected by haulers and trucked to Maple Valley, Washington, where Cedar Grove Composting, Inc., turns it into compost for home gardens and commercial landscaping.
Portland Composts is a voluntary program developed by Metro and the City of Portland, available to firms through private waste haulers. Currently about 50 businesses are participating in the program. They include grocery stores such as Safeway, Wild Oats, New Seasons, and Whole Foods; restaurants such as the McMenamin's brew pubs, Higgins Restaurant, and Widmer Brothers; and institutional kitchens, including Oregon health and Sciences University and Portland State University. The Port of Portland also is participating, with 20 hotels and restaurants at Portland International Airport - composting both pre- and postconsumer food waste.
Together these businesses are sending up to 815 tons of food waste a month to the Metro transfer station. The biggest contributor is Safeway, which provides about two-thirds of the tonnage. As part of its contract with Metro, Cedar Grove has agreed to site and build a composting facility in Portland if the amount of food waste reaches a threshold of 10,000 tons per year. In fact, Cedar Grove already has investigated one potential site, on Marine Drive. Although access issues on this site could not be resolved, Cedar Grove is actively looking for another site, says Babe O'Sullivan of the City of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development.

HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM IS PORTLAND'S FOOD WASTE?
Metro estimates that approximately 275,000 tons of food and nonrecyclable paper are thrown away each year in the metropolitan area. In Portland, about 75 percent of those discards come from commercial businesses. The “Portland Composts” program accepts vegetable, meat and dairy scraps, along with food-soiled paper and cardboard.
The City of Portland - and its Office of Sustainable Development - help companies set up their composting systems by providing free training for staff, collection containers, educational materials, and technical assistance and troubleshooting when needed. About marketing the finished compost from the Maple Valley facility, some is packaged and sold under the Cedar Grove name at retail stores in Oregon, including Home Depot and Lowe's.
The BioCycle West Coast Conference - to be held in Portland, Oregon March 20-22, 2006 - will have several major presentations on food residuals composting and field trips to sites.

Ann Sihler is editor of the Association of Oregon Recyclers' newsletter.

Copyright 2007, The JG Press, Inc.