Cleveland downtown businesses avoid landfill, send food waste to be composted into soil additives

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- There`s something rotten in downtown Cleveland.

But this might be urban decay Northeast Ohio can brag about -- and the next big green thing, some local sustainability experts say.

This is food composting -- in a big way.

Large-scale downtown food-waste makers like The Q, Tower City and the Browns, along with restaurants like the Great Lakes Brewing Co. and the Greenhouse Tavern, are heading a new effort to keep tons of biodegradable food scraps out of the landfill.

Instead, they dump their own unique combination of post-meal slop into biodegradable bags (often made out of potato starch) and a composting company hauls them away to be turned into a high-quality soil additive.

"This is the next wave," said Jill Ziegler, program manager for Sustainability Initiatives at Forest City Enterprises, who is coordinating composting efforts at Tower City and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

"We already know that people will sort recyclables and build green, clean with green products and live green in some way now, but this is the next step toward removing a big portion of what goes into the landfill."

Large volume of waste

And there`s plenty of compostable waste to be had: A recent study by the waste industry found that organic materials made up half of all household solid waste -- and up to 75 percent of that can be composted and re-used.

Ziegler and others said the numbers are probably even higher for sports arenas and certainly for restaurants but no doubt lower for offices and other businesses.

In a three-week pilot program in November 2009, eight downtown businesses, with the help of the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District and sustainability group Entrepreneurs for Sustainability (E4S), combined to collect 9 tons of food waste.

Most of that came from food preparation work in their corporate kitchens or restaurants, not from the vast amount of leftover fan food at the sports venues.

That`s the next level: The Browns and Cavaliers expect to be collecting and composting fan food waste -- possibly including biodegradable plates, cups and cutlery -- by next season. The Indians are also working on a plan for Progressive Field but haven`t yet settled on a contractor to pick up the material.

All of this makes Cleveland a part of the new movement toward zero waste, said Beau Daane of the county waste district. "We`re very excited to see the number of companies downtown and elsewhere who are taking the lead on this," he said. "This is a movement catching on here and around the country."  (To read the full article, click here)