How are Minneapolis residents doing with their green organics carts?

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, a group of volunteers, under the direction of Minneapolis’ recycling coordinator Kellie Kish, waded through two truckloads of lettuce and other juice-oozing kitchen scraps, pumpkins, flowers, pizza boxes, takeout leftovers and more, that had been dumped on the plastic-protected concrete floor of a Northside storage building. Their job was to sort and record several categories of compostable material, including food that would have been edible if used in time. They separated contaminants, such as plastics, non-compostable bags, textiles and recyclable items. Yard waste, while eventually mixed with food scraps at the composting facility, is collected separately, but some was found in the sort.

Each truckload contained roughly four tons of material; one load was from North and Northeast neighborhoods, the other was from South Minneapolis. The aim of the operation was to find out how residents are using the organic collection service. A smaller second batch was dumped and analyzed on Nov. 1.

The material collected came from 57,109 residential dwelling units (1-4 unit buildings), 200 larger residential or commercial properties, neighborhood parks and City buildings.

Kish said volunteers for this messy task are usually people involved in the waste and recycling industry, including recycling block leaders. New this year were volunteers from Homegrown Minneapolis, a group that focuses on helping food establishments reduce wasted food. It’s estimated that Minneapolis restaurants create 35,000 tons of food waste each year, 30% of the city’s total food waste. 

The volunteers were given three bins; two to hold sorted material and one to sit on while sorting. The bins separated edible food from anything non-compostable, including contaminants. All the separated contents will be weighed and then added to the yearly statistics. On the first day, the sorting took about four hours.

Kish said earlier sorts found an average 5.6% of a truckload was edible food. Making sure people are eating the food they buy will save them money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) related to wasted food. She noted, “If food waste was a country, it would have the third highest GHG emissions of any country.” 

During the recent  sort, the group also pulled food-service packaging for the first time to get an idea of the percentage of a truckload of organics is composed of food packaging. As part of Minnesota’s new environmental protection law for packaging and printed paper, manufacturers will have to pay a per-item fee for the products they introduce in the state. Those fees help cover the costs of the recycling system and a portion of composting programs (the portion that is food-packaging). 

Kish said, “Based on how yesterday went, this is going to be a huge challenge for the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) – the organization who will oversee the producers, the fees and the EPR system, to effectively calculate what portion of the organics system should be covered due to the packaging.”