Every year, Americans waste millions of pounds of food, much of which ends up in already packed landfills. So a local program to put that garbage to use, and help out farmers in the process, could be ideal. Officials with Winston-Salem and Forsyth County should encourage this program.
The idea is the brainchild of Mitchell Britt, a manager at Krankies Coffee in Winston-Salem. He's trying to start a citywide recycling effort that he calls Compost! Winston-Salem (OK, he could use some help with the name, but it's not as bad as O! Winston-Salem -- that marketing slogan from several years back that really was a piece of garbage).
Ideally, a composting service would collect organic waste from local restaurants and groceries and truck it to local farms for use as fertilizer, Elizabeth DeOrnellas reported last week in the Journal. Successful programs of this type can divert as much as 12 percent of landfill solid waste to recycling, experts say.
In Orange County, a program that began in 1999 has grown from recycling a few hundred tons a year to more than 4,000 tons. The county pays a contractor to haul food waste from UNC Chapel Hill, restaurants and a few grocery stores. The finished compost is sold to gardeners, landscapers and farmers.
Surely such a program could work here, once all the details are nailed down. For example, restaurant workers would have to be trained to recognize what waste can be composted. They'd have to filter out plastic, glass and metal scraps. Restaurants would need secure containers to store the compostable material until pickup.
"It all has to be very carefully tailored to each restaurant's method of operation," said Craig Coker, a consulting engineer to composting programs who works for a Roanoke, Va., company.
A contractor that trucks such waste plans to expand to the Greensboro area, and perhaps it could be persuaded to expand to Winston-Salem as well.
A Winston-Salem company, Innovative Recycling Services, is trying to get a permit to use its site to compose waste. Gary Bilbro, the company president, said he already has many potential contributors lined up.
For his part, Britt continues to enthusiastically push a composting program. He's scheduled a meeting on the subject for 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at Krankies, 211 E. Third St. Check it out if you get the chance.
For much of its history, this country has gobbled up resources at an alarming rate, filling up countless landfills with its discards. That pattern is gradually starting to change. The compost movement could be an important cog in that process. If it helps out farmers and gardeners in the process, that's all for the good.
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