Eugene plans to test a food waste recycling program, and honest accounting should be an important part of the trial. The program needs to pencil out, both in terms of energy and dollars, before the program goes citywide. An objective evaluation will be complicated, because short- and long-term costs and benefits will have to be weighed alongside factors that are difficult to quantify, such as environmental gains and what might be called the yuck factor.<\/p>\n
Many cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, recycle home food waste, and Eugene already recycles food waste from restaurants, grocery stores and institutional kitchens. Portland launched a curbside food waste recycling program in 2011 after conducting a pilot project like Eugene\u2019s. People in Portland now add their food scraps to their yard debris recycling bins, which are picked up every week. Regular garbage pickup is now on a biweekly schedule in Portland.<\/p>\n
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans discard 35 million tons of food waste each year. Food makes up 14 percent of the waste stream, and less than 3 percent of it is recycled. Because of the low recycling rate, food is the largest single type of waste that is hauled to landfills. The volume makes recycling an attractive option for cities such as Portland, which hauls most of its garbage 140 miles to the Columbia Ridge landfill in Arlington.<\/p>\n
The savings that come from trucking less garbage to a landfill are offset by the cost of transporting the food waste somewhere else. Portland delivers its food scraps to a composting facility in Washington County. Eugene is fortunate to have a local composter, Rexius, that will mix yard debris and food scraps to make a marketable soil supplement.<\/p>\n
A significant diversion of waste from the Short Mountain landfill near Goshen would result in an important benefit. A big, modern landfill close to Lane County\u2019s major population center is a significant asset \u2014 but it is an asset with a finite lifetime. If Short Mountain\u2019s lifetime can be prolonged, Lane County will avoid the costs of hauling garbage for longer distances, spare itself the headache of siting a new landfill or both.<\/p>\n
Organic material in the landfill decomposes, producing methane gas. Molecule for molecule, methane is a far bigger contributor of climate change than carbon dioxide. A food waste recycling program would mitigate that environmental problem.<\/p>\n