USA – Minneapolis school composting effort is for naught

A good example from the Star Tribune of the problems when good motives clash with poor systems design.



Every day at lunchtime in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District, students diligently separate food waste from other garbage. Leftover pizza goes in one bin, plastic forks and foam plates in another, empty pop bottles in a third.



For five years, the district has run an organics recycling program aimed at turning food and paper waste into compost. Started with a grant in 2002, the program was meant to help one of Dakota County‘‘s largest waste producers find an environmentally friendly way to dispose of trash and save money.



But there‘‘s a problem: The district‘‘s food trash has been unusable for compost because it gets contaminated with other garbage on the way to the waste company‘‘s plant. So it all goes to the incinerator to be burned with the rest of the trash.



“We‘‘re working with the [waste] company, and trying to find a way to improve the program,” said school district facilities manager Mike Schwanke. “We‘‘re disappointed…. The problem we ran into, we didn‘‘t foresee, and it‘‘s pretty hard to correct.”



The problem



Here‘‘s what happens: The food waste is loaded loose in the garbage truck for the trip to the plant. Other trash is loaded into the same truck in plastic bags, to be removed at the plant. But when the truck compacts its load, bags break and foam plates mix with food waste.



After the load invariably fails a visual inspection, the whole works is bundled off to the incinerator.



“You have to keep in mind that this is a new industry and a learning process,” said Judy Purman, an environmental compliance manager for Resource Recovery Technologies (RRT), a waste processing company that composts organic material at a facility outside of Rosemount. “Everybody tried really hard to make the program work.”



The Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district is the state‘‘s fourth largest, with about 28,300 students. Every day, students and staff produce eight tons of trash — nearly 2.8 million pounds per school year.



The program was supposed to save the district $25,000 to $30,000 a year on its trash bill, because disposing of organic material can be cheaper than disposing of regular trash.



When the district started the program, the food waste was turned into compost. Even then, contamination harmed the quality of the final product. Eventually, RRT stopped using the district‘‘s organic waste for compost, and savings have disappeared.



“That‘‘s ridiculous,” said Mary Schaubschlager, a junior at the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, a district magnet school. “We‘‘re making the effort to make a difference, but in the end it doesn‘‘t matter…. We have to change it.”



Other programs



The district‘‘s initiative is one of several Twin Cities composting programs that have met with varying levels of success. All send their organic waste to the plant outside Rosemount, which is the metro area‘‘s only state-certified recycler of organics such as food waste.



Most of the 484 tons composted in 2006 came from Hennepin County, including waste from the city of Wayzata and four school districts.



In the Robbinsdale, Hopkins, St. Louis Park and Minnetonka districts, students scrape food into biodegradeable plastic garbage bags. It‘‘s kept in separate dumpsters and picked up by separate trucks. More than 95 percent of the organic loads have passed inspections, said John Jaimez, Hennepin County‘‘s organics and recycling coordinator.



In the North River Hills neighborhood of Burnsville, residents have used<