After they prepare the food, Aramark employees don\u2019t just toss away the scraps \u2013 they weigh them first. Under a program that Aramark started five years ago, the international food-service giant has been keeping tabs on the monetary value of that fruit still hugging\u00a0the rinds and all that other detritus with an eye toward cost-cutting.<\/p>\n
But at the Lawrence Dining Hall at West Chester University, under an EPA-funded pilot program in the borough, Aramark workers are putting the discards to work. \u201cIt was the logical next step to do the right thing and compost,\u201d said\u00a0Jason Lewis, an Aramark chef at the university. If the practice, which began in September, works for Lewis and his coworkers, he said, the company could expand composting to other locations.<\/p>\n
The university and nine other entities\u00a0\u2014 restaurants, senior living facilities and Chester County Hospital \u2014 are part of the yearlong composting pilot program in West Chester.\u00a0Denise Polk, chair of the university\u2019s Communications Studies department, and Meghan Fogarty, who became the borough\u2019s first sustainability coordinator last year, are leading the project.<\/p>\n
The ripening U.S. composting industry got its start about 25 years ago when an increasing number of municipalities decided to keep yard trimmings out of landfills to save space, said Frank Franciosi, executive director of the U.S. Composting Council, a trade organization. Food waste has joined the party, and that has fed the growth of the industry during the last five years, he said.<\/p>\n
Many people know only that their trash goes away when they put it out, he said. \u201cWell, where\u2019s \u2018away?\u2019 \u201d Franciosi said. \u201c \u2018Away\u2019 is some mega-landfill somewhere, and they\u2019re filling up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food remnants and other carbon materials can be composted, a process by which microorganisms break down organic matter. That includes food scraped from plates, coffee grounds, bones, egg shells, napkins, fruit rinds, and rotted vegetables. Compost can reduce or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers.\u00a0Businesses that pay for trash pickup by the dumpster-full can save money by cutting volume.<\/p>\n
Rotting food in landfills produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.\u00a0Reducing methane is a key part of a\u00a0U.N. agreement to address climate change signed in Paris in 2015. That\u2019s the one the United States will withdraw from, President Trump said last week.<\/p>\n
A result of that agreement, France\u2019s\u00a0\u201c4 per 1,000\u201d initiative, seeks to trap carbon dioxide in soil, something promoted by composting.\u00a0 The initiative says that increasing the amount of carbon in soil by 0.4 percent a\u00a0year can slow annual increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Americans composted nearly two million tons of food, and food-composting collection programs reached\u00a0more than 2.8 million households in 2014, according to a November 2016\u00a0EPA report. However, the agency estimates that Americans produced more than 38 million tons of food waste in 2014.<\/p>\n
More than 60 licensed facilities\u00a0in Pennsylvania compost food waste and other materials. Among them are farms, colleges, state prisons and an Episcopal church. One goal of the West Chester project is to spur support of composting among businesses and residents to increase the number of facilities.<\/p>\n
Composting, of course, isn\u2019t the only remedy for reducing food waste or even the best one, according to the EPA. Its\u00a0hierarchy of food recovery solutions ranks composting near the bottom, just above incineration and use of landfills. Ideally, the EPA instructs people to produce only the food they will consume and give the excess, if edible, to people, then animals. If that is not possible, the goal should be to turn excess food into renewable energy.<\/p>\n