By Charlie Pioli Owner O-Town Compost

At O-Town Compost, we love food waste recycling. Composting is our favorite form of food waste recycling because the process aligns with natural food decomposition, and it creates an awesome soil amendment, which repairs soil health and combats topsoil depletion.

Anaerobic digestion, aerobic digestion, vermicomposting (a slow method of recycling, believe us, we’ve tried), Black Soldier Fly Larvae farming (also tried), all fall under the food recycling umbrella.

When it comes to wasted food, there is a well-thought-out hierarchy ranking the most environmentally beneficial to least beneficial action to take. The EPA recently published The Wasted Food Scale informing Americans how best to handle their food waste.

Prevent Wasted Food - In the common refrain, “reduce, reuse, and recycle,” this is basically the “reduce” part of it. This urges people to produce, buy, and serve only what is needed. We’re all guilty of going to a buffet and taking more than we can eat. The eyes are bigger than the stomach sometimes.

Donate - There are two types of food waste, edible and inedible. The inedible portion usually means peelings, trimmings, apple cores, avocado pits, egg shells, etc. This material isn’t consumable by humans, and needs to be composted. The edible portion is food that’s still good for human nourishment and needs to be redistributed through donation. (When 40% of the United States’ food is wasted, how is it possible that 1 in 5 Americans are living in food insecurity (not knowing where their next meal is going to come from)?

Upcycle - Upcycling food into new food products usually takes place at the production or manufacturing stage of the food supply chain. Edible parts of food can be upcycled into new food products. For example, orange peels can flavor beverages, broccoli stems can be turned into slaw or be dried into powder, and spent grains from the brewing process can be turned into bread.

Feed for Animals - In our experience, pigs love everything, chickens love fruits and veggies, and cows love mushy pumpkins after Halloween. Be careful not to feed animals expired produce with stickers/plastic on it, or feed pigs meat and dairy, risking transmitting disease from pathogens.

Leave Unharvested - Food crops are ideally harvested and used to nourish people. Sometimes market forces or environmental factors cause crops to remain unharvested in the field. These factors are often beyond the control of farmers and include commodity prices, market specifications, labor shortages, damage to crops by pests and disease, and weather events such as flooding or drought. Unharvested crops may be grazed by animals or plowed into the soil. The plant nutrients and carbon in unharvested crops enhance soil health and support the growth of future crops.

Composting - Put simply, this is following nature’s aerobic process of converting food waste into soil amendment and organic matter called “humus.” It allows for compostable serviceware items, compostable bags, all kinds of food waste, and turns it into a valuable resource for farmers and growers alike. Composting is probably the most common form of food waste recycling in the U.S., and it leads to a more resilient ecosystem.

Anaerobic Digestion with Beneficial use of Digestate/Biosolids - Anaerobic digestion generates biogas, which is a source of renewable energy. It also produces digestate or biosolids, nutrient-rich products that can be used beneficially, for example as fertilizer, soil amendment or animal bedding. When the digester is located at a water resource recovery facility, the final product is called biosolids. Digestate and biosolids can be treated in a variety of ways prior to being applied to land, for example by composting.

Anaerobic Digestion with Disposal of Digestate/Biosolids - Digestate and biosolids are sometimes disposed of in a landfill. When the digestate or biosolids are disposed, valuable nutrients are lost. Even if renewable energy (biogas) is generated, the environmental benefits are fewer than if digestate or biosolids had been beneficially used. Learn more about anaerobic digestion.

Apply to Land - Raw wasted food or digestate from the food manufacturing and processing sector is sometimes applied to fields as a soil amendment. Land application of raw wasted food may involve spreading, spraying, or injecting the wasted food on or below the surface of the soil. This can risk introducing pathogens, PFAs, or microplastics into the environment.

Landfill - EPA estimates that in the U.S., 24 percent of material in municipal solid waste landfills is food. Landfilling is one of the least preferred pathways because wasted food in landfills generates methane, a powerful and short-lived greenhouse gas. Because wasted food decays relatively rapidly, most of the methane it emits avoids capture by landfill gas collection systems.

Incinerate - Incineration is one of the least preferred pathways because valuable nutrients in wasted food are not recovered. Though incineration produces energy, wasted food makes for a poor feedstock because it is so wet and produces little energy compared to other municipal solid waste. It has negative BTU value for incineration, but brings in revenue for incinerators because food waste is heavy, and tipping fees are based on the tonnage.

Send Down the Drain - In Central Florida, digesters, like the ORCA, don’t provide any environmental benefits, because there is no biogas capture at our wastewater treatment facilities. They are simply breaking down the food waste inside the digester, and pushing it through to the wastewater treatment plant for later disposal of the biosolids in landfills. Your Insinkerator at home works in the same way.