St. Louis Should Follow Seattle’s Recycling Efforts
St. Louis needs to look at taking recycling to the next level, the way Seattle has done. Starting earlier this year restaurants in Seattle had to recycle — no more single-use packaging. This means use of items that can be composted.
The City hopes participation of the new ordinance will help prevent 6,000 tons of food service-ware and leftover food from entering landfills.
The compost process at Cedar Grove takes about eight weeks, depending on the time of year. From there, it sits a few weeks to darken before it can be sold as compost for use in gardens and landscaping. (source)
Seattle is the first to do this.
Photo by Richard Kenney, AIA
Some of you are now upset and having your right to produce waste infringed. As an equal member of society I shouldn’t be burdened by all the waste you produce. Just look at the amount of stuff you discard at a fast food place that goes into land fills.
From Seattle’s website:
Composting and recycling items that used to be considered waste starts July 1 at Seattle restaurants, coffee shops, food courts, cafeterias and other food service businesses in a major change driven by a new Seattle ordinance.
Customers can now put napkins, paper bags, wooden coffee stir sticks and many types of take-away containers into new in-store compost collection bins. Hot and cold beverage cups and lids will now go into recycling containers instead the trash.
Seattle’s ordinance, which requires all food service businesses to stop throwing away single-use food service ware and packaging, takes effect July 1.
“With our requirement that food service packaging must be compostable or recyclable, Seattle has taken a big step toward a zero waste future,” said City Councilmember Mike O’Brien. “You have to ask yourself why we should make stuff just to throw it away. With compostable and recyclable food containers, we’re closing the loop.”
“For the past year-and-a-half Seattle restaurant businesses and the City of Seattle have collaborated to make the new food packaging requirements work well for the industry, restaurant patrons and the environment,” said Timothy Croll, solid waste director for Seattle Public Utilities. “We hope that customers in coffee shops and quick-serve restaurants will take a moment at the end of their meals to learn the new system. After a few months, we expect it will be routine for everyone.”
“By offering their customers recycling and composting choices, Seattle restaurants will help prevent up to 6,000 tons of food service ware and leftover food from being sent to the landfill every year,” said Croll. “That’s the equivalent of a garbage train more than 100 cars long that will just disappear.”
Taco Time, a northwest chain of 70+ locations, has started implementing these guidelines at locations outside the City of Seattle. National chains that operate in St. Louis & Seattle, like Taco Bell & McDonald’s, must comply.
— Steve Patterson
http://atyourservice.seattle.gov/2010/06/30/seattle-restaurants-switch-to-composting-and-recycling/
Sounds like a great idea. Also: curbside composting would be a great idea.
What is curbside composting? Do you pile your stuff at the curb and wait for it to turn into compost?
Funny! but no. It’s like curbside recycling. Where I now live in Madison there’s a pilot program for curbside composting where you put your compostables in a small black trash can on the curb for pick up. It’s then taken to a centralized composting facility.
You do know that there is a difference between being “compostable or recyclable” and actually being composted or recycled. Is there a market locally / are there buyers here for an increased amount of material? Both the raw material (separated waste) and the end products? Does Taco Time actually recycle all this, or is it just a marketing ploy? If the reality is that most people do the “right thing” and do separate their trash, yet some/part/much of it still ends up in the landfill, have we really solved the “problem”? Or, do we just feel like we’re doing something to “save the planet”, when we really aren’t?
Locally, many of us have increased our recycling efforts. The city has installed recycling dumpsters and many of us diligently separate our trash. And while separate trucks do the pickups, I have this nagging doubt that only a small portion actually gets recycled and reused. Aluminum is a no brainer, glass and corrugated cardboard have a decent market, but how much of the various plastics and papers see a new use? (http://www.recyclingtoday.com/Article.aspx?article_id=70759 ) The city is currently picking up leaves – what happens to them? Or, are you saying that something is better than nothing, no matter what the cost?
Seattle just changed their market with this law, it’s not optional. The cost equation needs to be rethought as Seattle has done.
In Clayton we don’t have a compost option but in the last few years they added “single stream recycling.” This means we don’t have to seperate the different recycling products. Single stream recycling made it so easy we now take out the recycling bin 3-4 times more often than the trash bin.
It’s not a “marketing ploy”, it’s the law for all businesses and residences, and yes it actually gets composted or recycled. At my house in Seattle, we have to sort all of our trash into one of three bins: recycling, compost, and landfill. Each gets picked up by a different truck, and only the landfill garbage winds up in the landfill. What’s amazing is that the landfill bin is by far the smallest and least full. Really opened our eyes to how much waste goes unnecessarily into landfills.
While I don’t doubt that it gets picked up, how do we know it actually gets recycled and put to good, productive reuses? Related: http://www.athleticbusiness.com/articles/lexisnexis.aspx?lnarticleid=1767666362&lntopicid=136030023
You and I don’t really know, but if one company is picking up all the recycling, it’s pretty easy to check whether it actually gets recycled.
There is a great difference between the two. Here in St. Louis, I wonder if all those dumpsters do get mingled later in the stream. However, the yard waste usully goes to the park were it is mulched down. Yard waste is the biggest filler of dumps. But you can’t chage stupid either. We have trash and recycle bins side by side and yet one of our neighbors continues to put recycles into the trash.
And another often overlooked issue with recycles is that these containers are usually dirty and they are not picked up as often as regulary trash, so this leads to increase in the various rodent infestations.
I would be happy if every place gave me more appropriate leftover container than a big stryofoam box. Is it against food code to bring in my own plastic container? Those fit better in the fridge anyway.
When I go to Crazy Bowls and Wraps, where the takeout bowls are #6 plastic, I order it to dine in, then transfer it into my own glass lidded pyrex bowl. When I get Ethiopian takeout, I bring in my giant tupperware and they happily fill it with food. Don’t ask permission, just do it!
Usually no…bring your own container, but don’t expect them to fill it for you. Also, they usually aren’t allowed at buffet places but it’s not against code, it’s because people steal food.
I still love how we did it in Phoenix City…..one trash dumpster…to the curb, one single stream recycle dumpster…to the curb both once a week pick ups, in the alley…larger dumpsters for yard waste and bulk items…once a month pick up. But then again, SRP electric also allows you to meter your electric use with 3 different programs so you can pick the one that works best for you.
I wonder why Taco Time hasn’t switched to using bottles or dispensers for ketchup and hot sauce. The foil+plastic packaging for those little packets has to cost more than the product inside, and that’s not counting the amount of product that can never be gotten out of the packet. I find them annoying anyway, especially for fries, which need several of the little packets.
Please elaborate on the burden you bear by the waste I produce. I understand second-hand smoking and global pollution. I don’t know what costs or health impact you share as a result of my trash.
Re ketchup:
I’m guessing the smaller portion size means people use less ketchup.
I also guess that the labor cost of washing/refilling ketchup bottles (not present with the packets) is higher than the ingredient/packaging cost.
Farmers of Forty Centuries by F. H. King talks about, organic and
traditional food culture in China as a permanent agriculture that included
composting for soil fertility and health. His observations were around 1911.
This included a system for moving compost out of the city to the farms. Project
Gutenberg has a copy of the book.