Dive Brief:
- Oak Park, IL, a village immediately west of Chicago, is home to CompostAble- touted as the only public food scrap waste composting program in the state of Illinois.
- Residents pay a $14 fee each month in exchange for a plastic kitchen pail, compostable plastic bags, a 96-gallon cart for yard waste and collection services.
- Waste Management hauls the waste to a local facility, where it is pulverized, placed into windrows and rotated for aeration. The resulting compost is then offered to residents to use in gardens and landscaping.
Dive Insight:
Over one ton -- or an average of about 2,300 pounds -- of organics are diverted form the waste stream per week by program participants.
The kitchen receptacle holds food scraps such as vegetables, fruit, meat, bones, paper and dairy products. Although the program appears successful, it is worth noting that only about 10% of area residents are enrolled in the program.
Karen Rozmus, the environmental services manager for Oak Park, IL, said “Food scraps are the new frontier. As soon as we start getting more infrastructure, I think it’’s going to grow faster than recycling…I think they’re (people) ready for it.”
It has been recognized that without the proper infrastructure in place to recycle food waste, organics recycling programs are difficult, if not impossible to implement. If there is no facility to accept the food scraps in an area, states are finding it a challenge to mandate organics recycling and composting.
Some progress is being made, as state governments address the issue through the creation of subsidies and grants to promote building anaerobic digesters. In addition, legislation is underway in some states that focuses on curbing the volume of food waste discarded into landfills.