Chicken, pizza, and peels....

The US Department of Agriculture estimates about 96 billion pounds of food, or 27 percent of the 356 billion pounds of the edible food available for human consumption in the United States, were disposed of by food retailers (supermarkets, convenience stores, other retail outlets), food service, and consumers. Fresh fruits and vegetables, fluid milk, grain products, and sweeteners (mostly sugar and high-fructose corn syrup) accounted for two-thirds of these losses. According to the CIWMB, Californians throw away more than 5 million tons of food scraps each year. This food scrap constitutes 16 percent of all disposed materials going into landfills from businesses, residents, and institutions such as schools and prisons.

You can reduce food scrap waste and identify opportunities for food scrap waste recycling by doing the following:

Source Reduction

The first step to reduce the amount of food wasted is source reduction; preventing waste in the first place.

Tips for source reduction:
• Improve inventory control to reduce excess and out of date inventory
• Buy less food. Interview purchasing and catering staff to determine the food purchasing process. Closely monitor food inventories, food preparation, and food loss.
• Redesign menu cycles to improve opportunities for secondary use of food. (Ex: Leftover chicken can be used in chicken soup the following day)
• Work with suppliers to return packaging and shipping materials
• Improve labeling of materials so that contents, expiration date, and storage and handling are clearly identified
• Educate employees and servers to offer smaller portions to those employees who eat less
• Train employees to get only the food that they will eat. Consider implementing a “Build your own and pay by the ounce” cafeteria method.

How to quantify your facility food scrap waste?
To quantify the amount of food scrap waste produced at a facility, a food survey should be administered. This survey will help to identify the eating habits of the employees/students/staff and quantify the average amount of waste produced per person. This survey can be followed with a food scrap audit and weighing of the waste, plates, utensils, and food scrap thrown away in a single day.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay Municipality District has begun collecting food scraps from restaurants and grocery stores. They collect the methane generated during the decomposition process, and use this gas to fuel the energy-hungry pumps and pipelines at its 49-acre wastewater treatment plant. The leftover scraps are then turned into compost. To read more about this see the following:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/24/BAS618T9N9.DTL