Food waste amounts to 92 billion pounds annually, according to the nonprofit group Feeding America. Though food doesn’t last forever, throwing scraps in the trash doesn’t have to be your only option.
Eugene residents with household recycling and trash bins are also provided with gray bins for composting by the city. Disposal of food waste in this gray bin comes at no additional cost and is processed through the Love Food Not Waste® program. The program partners with Rexius, a landscaping and waste management company, to turn the food into compost.
“Food is a huge portion of what’s in the landfill and a huge emitter of methane gas. A lot of that gas is released into the atmosphere so (that) is a big emphasis the city took on to divert that material. The diversion of food waste from the landfill was a huge step for that climate action plan,” Donny Addison, waste prevention program manager for the city of Eugene, said.
The compost is then distributed to local nonprofits, school garden programs and businesses like Down to Earth, a garden center.
“We want to make sure that this final product is going back into the community where it came,” Addison said.
Though the city’s composting system is fairly accessible for residents living in houses, apartment dwellers might face more challenges.
Heartwood Apartments is one of few apartment complexes that offers composting services for its residents.
“When we started composting it added to the allure of a better healthy community way of living,” Heartwood Assistant Community Manager Deven Hughes said. “It seems people are more interested in doing this, whether it is for their community or the planet.”
Hughes said that residents who had not had much or any experience composting started to get engaged with the process.
“We definitely got a lot of support starting composting, and we got a lot of people interested in composting that weren’t originally and they started asking questions,” Hughes said.
Though the program started as a success, over the summer residents had to throw their food in the trash bin because of the “intense odor” stemming from the apartment’s food waste receptacles.
Students who live in apartments that don’t offer composting services can drop their food off at the Rexius retail site near West Eugene, or at UO’s Grove Garden.
Rexius is a commercial-grade composting site, meaning they are able to process foods such as meat bones, dairy products and highly processed foods which do not decompose in backyard composting systems, including the composting system used by the Grove Garden.
“We don’t have a super large industrial pile (with) so much mass that it’s super super hot, so it’s easier to break down things like fruits and vegetable scraps that are not cooked, (and) coffee grounds, egg shells — we wouldn’t take things that take more time to break down,” Grove Garden co-coordinator Valentine Bentz said.
Bentz said the largest problems they have encountered with composting at the Grove Garden is people adding processed food that doesn’t biodegrade — despite the compost being kept at around 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Composting is really forgiving as long as people are conscious of what they are adding and we keep turning it,” Bentz said.
UO also has a foot in the game, composting 80 tons of food waste produced in dining halls and offices each year, according to Solid Waste and Zero Waste Operations Manager Phil Chesburo. Additionally, UO is “exploring a potential student-led plan” involving composting in residential halls.
“The key challenge is balancing sanitation with stewardship, and details are still being developed,” Chesburo said.
Addison also spoke on the city’s involvement in this plan to potentially expand composting at UO.
“I know students are frustrated that there aren’t a lot of composting bins everywhere, but that would lead to more contamination. I’m hoping we can work with UO to test out a multi-unit pilot program really soon,” Addison said.
