SWACO has long identified food waste as one of the largest components of what central Ohioans throw away, making up 15% of annual refuse collections with nearly a million pounds arriving at the landfill each day. In 2019, SWACO, in partnership with dozens of community partners, launched Save More Than Food which is helping to prevent food waste at homes, schools, businesses and in the food industry. Now, SWACO is expanding those efforts through a partnership with several local eateries to pilot a new restaurant composting program at Budd Dairy Food Hall, and Joya鈥檚 and Kittie鈥檚 Cakes of Worthington.
As part of the pilot, each of the restaurants underwent an initial waste audit in which experts from Green Scope Consulting sorted through everything that was being thrown away each day.听 The results showed that up to 75% of what was going into the trash can could have been recycled or composted instead of going to the landfill.听 Next, the restaurants contracted with a local compost hauler to collect their organic material and turn it into healthy compost, with SWACO picking up the bill for the first six months of service, after which the restaurants will take over the hauling costs.
“Having grown up and spent a good portion of my life around the restaurant industry, helping my dad and brother with our family business, I鈥檝e seen first-hand that restaurants are always going to have a certain amount of wasted material,鈥� said SWACO Executive Director, Joe Lombardi.听 鈥淏ut while we all know that wasting food wastes money, it also wastes all of the resources that went into growing, transporting, and preparing the food, and putting that waste in the trash reduces the life of our landfill, so we鈥檙e thrilled to have worked with these restaurateurs on this pilot program and are looking forward expanding it.鈥�
In the first five months of the pilot program, the three restaurants together diverted more than 20,000 pounds of organic material from the landfill.听 Final results will be tallied at the beginning of March, with the restaurants then taking over the cost of compost hauling going forward.
鈥淎t Budd Dairy, we believe in being better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.听 Part of that growth is taking care of our community and being good stewards by helping do our part in diverting waste from our landfills.听 We strive to be a part of the solution to problems we face as a community, state and nation.听 We are proud to do our part and I am proud of our team in helping to divert almost 15,000 pounds so far,鈥� said Jeremy Hughes, General Manager of Budd Dairy Food Hall.
When the first round of restaurants have completed the pilot, SWACO is optimistic the results will support working with as many as 10 new restaurant partners this year to continue to divert food waste and other organic materials from the landfill and into healthy compost.
鈥淎t Kittie鈥檚, we are committed to sustainability and are very proud of the work that we have done to reduce waste.听 We have spent significant resources to ensure that almost all of the supplies and products that we purchase and use can now be composted or recycled.听 This work started in our German Village bakery and in our Bexley Kittie鈥檚 coffee shops.听 We are excited to now have the opportunity to work with SWACO in our Kittie鈥檚 in Worthington to continue this very important initiative,鈥� said Steve and Diane Herman, the owners of Kittie鈥檚 Cakes.
SWACO will also be rolling out a new Food Waste Champions program later this spring to assist all sorts of local businesses in their work to divert food waste and other organic materials from the landfill.