"Innovations" Case Studies: Food Waste Recovery

Berkeley Commercial Food Scraps Collection Program Case Study

The City of Berkeley began its pilot food scrap collection program in 1997 after a waste stream analysis showed that 25 percent of city-collected refuse from the commercial sector was food scraps. The City of Berkeley is fairly unique in providing refuse collection services to its residential and commercial sectors.

In fact, city collection is required for putrescible materials, although other companies may collect dry refuse. Diversion of organic materials is an important element in the city’s efforts to reach and surpass the 50 percent diversion goal. The food scraps collection program, which serves the commercial sector, is part of the city’s multi-faceted organics management program. Other initiatives include green waste and wood diversion.

As of February 2000, the pilot program was collecting food scraps from 39 business accounts ranging from large supermarkets and restaurants to bakeries, coffee shops, juice bars, and diners. Generators may include any food scraps except meat, and they may also include flowers and waxed cardboard boxes. One customer, Pyramid Brewery, also diverts the diatomacious earth from its filters. In all, the 39 businesses are diverting about 140 tons per month of food scraps. The program uses standard technology and can easily be duplicated by other cities.

Most of the businesses participating in the pilot food scraps collection program also recycle cardboard, brown bags, mixed papers, bottles, and cans under the city’s commercial recycling service. Recovery of food scraps brings the recycling rate of these businesses to 50 percent or higher. The City of Berkeley reports a 42 percent overall recycling rate.

Picture below shows a container used to set out food scraps.

In the pilot program, city crews collect food scraps on the residential plant debris routes using a front-end loader truck. (When the crew finishes collecting residential yard trimmings, they then collect commercial food scraps.) The city supplies customers with containers in which to place their discarded foods. The size of the container depends on the needs of the business. The city offers front-loading containers ranging in size from 1 cubic yard to 6 cubic yards, plus 32, 64, or 96-gallon carts.

The larger generators generally have the larger containers, but the size of the container also depends on space issues in addition to the amount of food scraps generated. Customers can line the carts with biodegradable compostable plastic bags, which the city also provides. Customers collect their food scraps at all generation points, such as receiving, food preparation, and cleanup.

Pickup frequency varies based on customers’ needs. Initially, the city collected food scraps once or twice a week, but it soon became clear that some customers would need more frequent service. The city collects food scraps six days a week from some of its accounts. City crews combine collected food scraps with plant debris at the city’s transfer station. Gilton Resource Recovery picks up the organic material in long-haul trailers and composts it at its plant in Modesto, Calif., about 50 miles away. The site uses open windrows.

Gilton Resource Recovery returns about 20 tons a month of the finished compost to the city, which gives it to schools and community gardens. City staff members work with public schools and a grant recipient to create gardens at the schools. Willard Middle School has received more than 200 yards of the compost and it sells the produce grown with it. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, in cooperation with Chez Panisse Restaurant, has created an award-winning garden. Called the edible schoolyard, the garden provides food for cooking classes and school lunches. This program has been a model for other school gardens.

The city provides a storage site for the compost and a front-loader and operator to load the trucks from the gardens and schools. The city also delivers large amounts of compost to schools. The schools and community gardens have indicated that the availability of free compost from the city, and the city’s assistance in loading their vehicles, has been critical to their expansion and success.

In implementing the pilot program, the city set out to solicit the participation of the largest food generators. It did this by obtaining a list of all food-generating businesses (using appropriate SIC codes) provided by Alameda County and then making in-person visits with business owners and managers. The city also targeted food-generating businesses in close proximity to each other to increase the program’s collection efficiency. Two-person city crews do the collection. The recycling program manager, field representative, and recycling operations supervisor do the outreach, education, and monitoring.

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Picture below shows a toter for food scraps provided by the City of Berkeley.

Costs, Economics, and Benefits

The city charges participants in the food recovery program the same amount for separated refuse and food scraps collection as it would charge for the same level of refuse service. (The city charges approximately $50 for steam-cleaning a customer’s container.)

To encourage more businesses to sign up for the food scrap collection program, the city is investigating charging its customers a lower fee for collection of separated food scraps. The city pays Gilton Resource Recovery $25 per ton to transport and compost food scraps and plant debris. In contrast, tipping fees and transportation costs for refuse cost the city $40 per ton.

The two-person crew collecting food scraps three days a week costs $70,584 per year. (Three-day-a-week collection is the average collection pickup frequency.) These collection costs include benefits and overhead but generally represent labor costs only. Vehicle costs represent another $50,000 per year, and bins cost another $10,000 per year. In all, collection costs are about $77 per ton and are expected to decrease as more businesses join the program.

While the city’s refuse costs have not gone down as a result of the pilot program, the city’s recycling coordinator believes that if the city operated a full route, these costs would drop because processing food waste is cheaper than disposing garbage.

Program equipment costs from start-up through February 2000 have totaled more than $200,000. A grant from the Alameda County Waste Management Authority covered $35,000 of these costs. The rest came from the refuse fund, which is made up of refuse fees (user fees). This source will continue to pay for equipment needs. The city has spent approximately $9,200 for containers and carts and $2,300 for biodegradable bags. The front-end loader cost $195,000.

Table 5: Equipment Costs (Berkeley)

Source: Debra Kaufman, City of Berkeley Recycling Program, Berkeley, California (February 2000).

Challenges and Opportunities in Implementation

The city experienced two major challenges in implementing its program:

• The city initially used a rear-loader truck but soon found that containers full of food were too heavy for the truck.
• The containers would get extremely dirty each day because only food was going into them. Sometimes, sticky waste such as bread dough was difficult to get out of the container.

To solve the first problem, the city purchased a front-end loader truck. Not only has the truck eliminated the weight issue as a problem, but it has also increased efficiency because it can load bins and carts and efficiently collect various sizes of accounts on the same route.

To solve the second problem, the city purchased organic biodegradable bags to use as liners for the containers and to give to merchants to use for their food discards. It also now provides a monthly steam-cleaning service for the containers. The city charges approximately $50 per cleaning.

Contamination has not been a problem, nor have odor issues. Generally the businesses participating in the pilot program are businesses that have a lot of food discards. Keeping the food scraps separate has not entailed a huge change for them.

One remaining challenge is expanding the program to all food waste generators in Berkeley (there are about 540). Once the city establishes an incentive rate for those who participate in the program, it plans to expand to other food waste generators. In the short-term, the city expects to expand its pilot program to 50-80 businesses.

The picture below is a City of Berkeley front-end load truck emptying a customer's food scraps.

Funding Mechanisms

The pilot food scraps collection program, like all the city’s recycling and refuse services, is funded from refuse fees collected from residents and businesses. There are no separate fees for any of the organics programs except for the drop-off of clean organics at the transfer station, which has a 30 percent reduced rate.

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Last updated: October 26, 2007