Food Waste
By Paula Trotter
Published: Red Deer Advocate, Dec. 11, 2010
Picture an adult male black bear sitting in your kitchen garbage and you’ll get an idea of how much food you waste each year.
Every Canadian was guilty in 2007 of throwing out about 180 kg (400 pounds) of food, or roughly the weight of an adult male black bear, according to Statistics Canada.
That adds up to more than six million tonnes of solid food tossed out. Another 2.8 billion litres of liquids such as milk, coffee, pop and juices were also wasted that year.
Tossing out your table scraps, or the food you never got around to eating before the expiration date, puts a strain on the environment in two ways.
Organic materials — food as well as yard waste like leaves and lawn clippings — can produce potent greenhouse gases when left to decompose in a landfill.
But perhaps even more damaging is the extra work needed by producers and manufacturers to keep up with the increasing demand of hungry yet wasteful consumers.
As Olds College composting technician Shirley Lupino explained, “Every time we throw something away, we have to replace it.”
That means more fuel is needed to harvest and transport crops. More oil is used to produce the plastics for food containers. More mining is required to collect the necessary materials to create the metal that some food is packaged in. More electricity is used to wash and package food.
The $63.5 billion that Canadians spent on food and beverages in 2003 resulted in the production of nearly 46,000 kilo tonnes of greenhouse gases from farm to plate, Statistics Canada found.
But more organizations are reconsidering what they’re willing to toss in the trash, including some in Central Alberta.
Disdbury and Sundre joined the Town of Olds in 2003 under the Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission to collect and transport residential organic waste to the Composting Technology Centre at Olds College.
What began as a pilot curbside collection project between the college and Town of Olds 15 years ago is now one successful example of sustainability.
Lupino said more than 1,400 tonnes of organic materials from the three municipalities has been diverted from the landfill so far in 2010. This is up by 400 tonnes from 2006.
“We’re building a sustainable soil that will support plant life over years,” Lupino said of the nutrient-rich compost produced through this program.
The compost is sold back to community members for $40 per cubic metre and can be used as a top dressing on lawns and for flower and vegetable gardens.
Lupino said they sold the entire amount that was produced last year.
Concerned about the size of its carbon footprint, the Red Deer Food Bank has also turned to composting.
The agency has long played a role in helping suppliers divert food waste from the landfill. It accepts well over 450,000 kg (one million pounds) of non-perishable and perishable food each year through reclamation processes at the national, provincial and local levels.
Executive director Fred Scaife said that food rejected by retailers is diverted to feed the hungry. This includes food in dented cans, damaged boxes or breads, dairy and produce that is nearing the end of its shelf life.
Less than 10 per cent of what they receive cannot be used, Scaife said.
Still, they started separating organic materials from the garbage two years ago.
The food bank uses every scrap of food it can, and what can’t be used is disposed of in an environmentally-friendly manner, Scaife said.
The organic waste is collected in a large bin and picked up by local company Waste Co.
Waste Co. director Jeremy Blockson said the company use the waste to create compost for landscaping clients.
He hopes to start collecting food waste from restaurants and city residents in the near future.
“We’re helping people today through feeding them,” Scaife said. “We like to believe that we’re helping people in the next generation by being environmentally conscious about what we’re doing with our waste.”
And the next generation is doing its part by learning how to compost.
Marlene Kafara, a teacher assistant who runs the Enviro Group at St. Teresa of Avila School, said worm composting was recently added to the group’s activities, which includes paper and cardboard recycling.
Ventilated plastic storage containers filled with moistened soil, shredded newspaper and red wiggler worms were added to six classrooms in November.
Kafara said her goal is to have a bin in every classroom.
Students put items such as apple cores, grapes and lettuce into the bins. The worms then convert these scraps into rich compost, which may be used in the flower beds at the school.
Grade 4 and 5 students who are studying composting tend the bins as part of their science curriculum.
“The landfills are just filled with garbage as it is,” Kafara said. “If they can see that by having these red wigglers and getting good composting soil from there that you can put back into your garden and grow vegetables, there’s not going to be so much waste in the world.”
It’s a message that the students understand.
“I like that when you compost, it helps save the world,” said Grade 4 student Miranda Cairns. “It’s important to give the world a better chance to keep growing new things.”
Her classmate Matt Mayer agreed, saying: “It’s important to keep our world alive and healthy so we can live longer and better.”
In 2004, roughly 1.7 million tonnes of material was diverted from Canadian landfills, according to Statistics Canada. This was a 70 per cent increase over four years.
Close to two-thirds of this organic waste was produced at the residential level.
But more can be done.
Olds was the only Alberta municipality highlighted as one of the success stories in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ 2009 report Getting to 50 per cent and beyond: Waste Diversion Success Stories from Canadian Municipalities.
Thanks to its curbside organics collection program and recycling depots, the town has a diversion rate that is higher than 40 per cent — more than double the national average.
However, the report noted that the typical residential garbage bag is filled with roughly 40 per cent organic waste and 40 per cent recyclable materials.
“There’s always room to grow,” Lupino said. “Most of the papers that come out say 80 per cent can be diverted. I guess . . . Olds is half way to the goal.”