By Maggie Romuld

According to Statistics Canada, this country produces 21 million tonnes of garbage annually (675 kg of trash per person). Of that shameful amount of trash, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 1999) estimated that approximately 34% is food and garden waste, 30% is paper and paper products, 15% is glass and metal, 11% is plastic and 10% is textiles and miscellaneous material. If food scraps and yard waste contribute the most volume to our overflowing dumpsters, why have we traditionally been so much better at recycling the other stuff? Is it simply the "ick factor" or are we labouring under the false assumption that our slimy watermelon rinds and coffee grounds have no marketable value? In many developing countries, organic material is not considered waste because it has always been put to good use, such as for rural farming. This reuse mentality is a subset of the economic situation, which dictates that all materials, even those we don't traditionally think of as resources, must be used to their full potential. As a result, the reuse, repair and recycle culture of developing countries is more fully engrained than developed ones, with numerous recyclers, scavengers, and collectors earning their living salvaging waste material and reclaiming that waste for further use.

In the developed world, composting has traditionally been less common, but its popularity is steadily rising as governments mandate higher and higher waste diversion targets. Once the domain of the "Mother Earth" crowd, organics recycling is now mainstream, taken to an industrial level to deal with huge quantities of uneaten food and food preparation wastes from institutional, commercial and residential sources. Municipalities have discovered that by treating food scraps as a resource, they can reduce the need for new landfills, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and recover the nutrient value of food through compost to save, or make, a little money on the side.

In the European Union (EU), a landfill directive mandates that each of the member states achieve a 65% reduction in the amount of organic material they send to landfills. The directive has prompted a major expansion of the composting industry and, as a whole, Europe is moving towards the full reuse of organic waste. Several countries, including Germany and Austria, have outpaced the others and now have countrywide implementation of material separation, collection and treatment. While both countries are aiming for less than 5% organic materials in their landfills, they are using different strategies to achieve their goals. In Germany, large-scale, high technology systems are run by waste authorities, while in Austria, composting projects are smaller, low-tech and farm-centred. Other countries in the EU, including Denmark and Great Britain, are currently establishing policies and setting up separate collection and composting programs, while France, Finland and several other countries are beginning to develop their compost strategies.

While it is still fairly rare in North America, a number of municipal curbside collection systems have been expanded to include residential food waste. In some communities, recycling food waste is no more difficult than leaving it out for the garbage truck. Organic materials are collected and transported to a special facility where they are sorted, prepared and processed into compost. Collection methods vary, as do the types of materials accepted, processing technologies and the final product. The largest industrial composting facility in North America is located on the outskirts of Edmonton, Alberta. The complex is the size of eight football fields and is capable of processing up to 300,000 tonnes of residential waste and sewage sludge annually. Sixty percent of Edmonton's total waste is currently sorted, mixed, screened, refined and then aged before being used as a soil supplement or mulch for home landscaping, crop production, roadside erosion control, sports turf renovation, oilfield reclamation or forest recovery.

Some organizations are successfully cutting out the middle man by composting on-site using pest resistant, fully contained "in-vessel" systems. For those who traditionally pay to have waste hauled, on-site composting has proven to be an effective way to cut costs by reducing the volume or frequency of trash collection, while at the same time creating a resource in the form of finished compost to be used on location or sold for profit. At the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in the United States, food waste is collected from the dining halls and several local businesses and composted at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture's Kingman Farm. The UNH Organic Garden Club uses the compost to grow vegetables which are then sold on campus and used in the dining halls. Another successful system, the vermi-composting (worm composting) program at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), is "one of the most developed in Canada and was established to process organic wastes from campus cafeterias." The compost system is part of day-to-day operations of the BCIT campus and it processes "approximately 60 kg per day of coffee, fruit and vegetable cuttings, reducing campus waste by about 16 tonnes per fiscal year for an annual savings of over $1700."

Composting, especially on a large scale, is not without issues and waste managers are continually improving their operations to deal with a variety of problems including container ventilation, fly breeding cycles, mould, odour and pests. Numerous examples of successful organized composting programs can be found throughout the world, however, because organic recycling works and it makes sense, environmentally and financially. Diverting organic wastes from landfill sites minimizes human impact on the environment by conserving landfill space and reducing the amount of methane gas produced when organic materials decompose in oxygen-poor landfill conditions. And, regardless of the system used, whether backyard composter, on-site "in-vessel", or off-site composting facility, the finished compost is a valuable soil amendment. The compost can be used by the producer to enrich the soil, or it can be sold as organic fertilizer to a manufacturer to earn cash - either way the food-waste loop is closed.