A long, multiple-year effort just came to a conclusion for me and my fellow travelers involved in InSinkErator’s municipal evaluation which, among other things, strived to quantify how much food waste people actually process in their disposer. We undertook this series of projects in order to also determine how much could be diverted from the city landfill via disposers.

Verifying the amount of food waste diverted would help us estimate a city’s savings in greenhouse gas generation and renewable energy production as a result of disposer usage.

So how did we decide where to go? We didn’t just take off and let fate decide (as popular culture may have urged at one time.) After considering several cities for participation based on their expressed desire for reducing food waste and increasing resource recovery at the local water resource recovery facility (also known as wastewater treatment plant), our team decided to stage the studies in Philadelphia, Tacoma, Milwaukee, Chicago and Boston.

Food waste disappears after it is processed in a disposer so it can be hard to measure. This led us to developing a plan to measure and compare the amount of food waste in the garbage from homes without disposers to the amount thrown away after installing them for the first time. The difference before and after would represent the number we were chasing. So that’s what we did. In each city we traveled to – after installing disposers in about 500 homes. We met many people, plumbers and politicians along the way – many of whom are now good friends.

Disposers present a solution for reducing and recycling unavoidable food waste by diverting it from landfills, and the research and project sought to quantify this useful existing tool and advocate for its role in public policy while engaging the community.

As Jerry Garcia would say, lately it occurs to me. . . that the cities we visited achieved uniform and statistically significant results – a 30% reduction in food waste tossed out. A reduction like this has economic and environmental implications for municipalities managing solid waste and their budgets. Visit the website to find out more and download the full report.

Will tomorrow bring more cities joining Philadelphia which is now effectively endorsing disposers as a way to reduce food waste in the trash can and at the curb? It’s hard to say. But we’re ready to hit the road again and make the scene if there are cities that are interested in the story. And we’ll just keep truckin.'

by Casey Furlong

According to an EPA report ⁽¹⁾, approximately 20% of all trash is managed using Waste to Energy (WtE). Most of us know this as incineration. The same report describes a considerable amount of that garbage consists of paper, plastic, metal and food scraps. Incinerating trash at a WtE plant as a method of municipal solid waste (MSW) management misses the opportunity to optimize resource recovery. It converts almost everything to heat and ash. Food consists mostly of water, so does it make sense to burn it?

Government officials in charge of improving recycling rates have a difficult task, especially in areas that have WtE plants, which require a constant supply of trash. However, officials may be surprised that a facility’s generating capacity won’t be significantly diminished if some or all of the food scraps are eliminated from the trash.

Moisture in food inversely correlates to heating value of MSW

A paper titled “The Effect of Food Waste Diversion on Waste Heating Value and WtE Capacity⁽²⁾” evaluated how heating potential of garbage changed as increments of food waste were removed prior to being disposed of in an incinerator. The authors found by removing just one quarter of the food scraps (7.3% of the total trash), the heating value per ton of incoming trash reduced by 3.4%. The affect is nearly linear with 50%, 75% and even the unlikely 100% diversion of food scraps from the landfill.

If a community was to redirect all of their food scraps to anaerobic digestion and composting, there would be almost 30% less trash being burned at the WtE facility, but only a 14% reduction in heating value. So, the overall amount of energy generated is less, because less garbage is incinerated. However, the amount of energy per ton of garbage is actually higher without food waste. The moisture content contributed by food inversely correlates to the heating value of general MSW.

Starving a landfill after starving an incinerator

In order to avoid an expensive service shut-down and power supply interruption before the incoming trash runs out, the authors suggest officials redirect certain waste streams from landfills to make up tonnage shortfalls. Starving a landfill after starving an incinerator — now that’s a conclusion I agree with.

⁽¹⁾United States Environmental Protection Agency. 2015. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures 2013. https://www.epa.gov/waste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2013_advncng_smm_rpt.pdf

⁽²⁾LoRe, Anthony M. and Harder, Susana Harder. 2012. “The Effect of Food Waste Diversion on Waste Heating Value and WtE Capacity.” 20th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference 2012. https://proceedings.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1716375

Casey Furlong is an Environmental Specialist for InSinkErator. With an extensive background in landfill engineering, Casey has designed, permitted, constructed and operated municipal solid waste landfills and large-scale food and landscape waste compost facilities. He is a certified landfill manager in Wisconsin and registered professional engineer in the states of WI, IL and IN.