Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1037828
Summer 2018 37 Healthy is in and restaurants are responding with more plant-based menu options, cleaner ingredients, and low-cal substitutions. All of which is good for the country's waistline but is inadver- tently contributing to the mountains of trash cover- ing its landfills. Think organic material, vegetable scraps, avocado peels, fish and shells. Discarded food accounts for 22 percent of the waste in the nation's dumping grounds and a great deal of it comes from commercial institutions and restau- rants, says the EPA. "As consumers continue to demand fresher and healthier choices, there will be more fruits and vegetables to peel, cut and prepare— meaning more food scraps to manage in more places," says Chad Severson, the president of InSinkErator. He sees mounting efforts to divert the amount of food waste headed for landfills in states and abroad as an opportunity to have an impact on a growing crisis. "One major driver of our business growth is the growing number of municipalities, states and countries banning com- mercial kitchens from sending their food waste to landfills, so we've invested in new technologies and designs to help solve this problem for cus- tomers," Severson says. Currently, there are five states that have waste reduction plans or organics laws for commercial businesses—California, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. And, there are four more considering bans prohibiting res- taurants, and other entities that generate large quantities of food, from sending their organic waste to landfills. InSinkErator and parent com- pany Emerson have responded by partnering with several large-scale operations to offer more sustainable solutions, like its Grind2Energy pro- gram. It meshes well with the fast-paced churn of grocery store chains, casinos and venues like the Cleveland Browns' FirstEnergy Stadium, where there is lots of food, buffets and leftovers. The Grind2Energy program takes that excess and turns it into renewable energy using a grinder, a holding tank, IoT connectivity, and an anaerobic digester. "It's all about capturing commercial food waste for the purposes of using that energy in the form of captured methane gas," says Severson. Southern California's Northgate Gonzalez Markets embraced the manufacturer's Grind2Energy system as part of a pilot program CHAD SEVERSON InSinkErator "Cities are looking at food waste disposers as a great tool to help divert food waste from landfills." By Stacy Ward, Editor in Chief stacy@feda.com