Food Waste Projects Improve Climate and Circularity

The Basics: Methane & Greenhouse Gas

First, let’s get a quick review on methane. Methane (chemical formula = CH4) is a gas that is produced naturally due to geological processes like those in volcanoes and decomposition processes like those in swamps or wetlands. It can also be produced by human activities such as the extraction and refining of fossil fuels, decomposition in landfills, and yes, even livestock farming. When methane is released into the atmosphere it can trap heat and re-emit it back to the Earth — the greenhouse effect. When greenhouses gases trap too much heat, they contribute to changes in climate causing extreme weather, food supply disruptions, increased wildfires and other effects.

Next, let’s take a look at a few statistics.

• Methane makes up approximately 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., second only to carbon dioxide (CO2) at 80% (EPA 2024).

• Methane is 28 times more potent at trapping heat when compared to carbon dioxide over a 100 -year period. When measured over a 20-year period, methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013).

• Landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US with emissions comparative with that of more than 24 million gas-powered vehicles driven for one year (EPA 2024).

• Landfilled food waste is estimated to cause 58% of methane emissions from landfills (EPA 2023).

• 61% of methane generated from landfilled food waste escapes into the atmosphere before it can be captured by landfill gas collection systems (EPA 2023).

Carbon Neutrality, Recycling and a Health Climate

Image Source: U.S. EPA Wasted Food Scale

As the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) pursues the state’s bold goals of carbon neutrality by 2050 and a 45% recycling rate by 2030, food waste reduction and composting have emerged as key strategies where these goals can be addressed simultaneously. Specifically, the Michigan Healthy Climate Plan calls for cutting food waste by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030.

In a Planet Detroit article, Julie Staveland, assistant division director for EGLE’s Materials Management Division said, “EGLE is investing in this issue because reducing food waste is one of the lowest-hanging fruit we can address to help us reach our climate goals, as identified in the MI Healthy Climate Plan.”

NextCycle Michigan is one of the primary programs EGLE is using to address food waste management. The NextCycle Michigan Accelerator program advances on-the-ground projects that will reduce waste or increase reuse, recycling, or composting in Michigan.

In just the first four years of the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator, nearly two dozen teams took advantage of the program to take their food-recovery-related projects to the next level. This article highlights six teams and one NextCycle Michigan network partner.

Redirecting Surplus Food

Both the U.S. EPA and Michigan EGLE have published guidance on sustainable food waste management activities ranking food waste prevention and food surplus donation and upcycling as preferred strategies to reduce environmental impacts. NextCycle Michigan alum team Metro Food Rescue and network partner Make Food Not Waste operate, and cooperate, in this space.

Metro Food Rescue is a food rescue organization in metro Detroit serving as a link between businesses with food to donate—bakeries, manufacturers, farmers, caterers, event centers, and the like—and pantries and soup kitchens which provide food to people in need. In 2023 they provided nearly two million meals to their neighbors while simultaneously cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 4,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2E). Working with mentors and consultants provided by NextCycle Michigan, Metro Food Rescue explored revenue models and built partnerships with more food generators and pantries. They are on track to grow their impact to 15 million meals per year by 2027.

Chad Techner , founder and CEO of Metro Food Rescue, collecting over 72,000 pounds of leftover food and beverages from the 2024 NFL Draft which was held in Detroit.  Image Source: Metro Food Rescue

Metro Food Rescue delivers food to Harriette "Chef Bee" Brown of Sisters on a Roll Mobile Cafe and Catering every Wednesday, where she creates amazing meals for her community. Image Source: Metro Food Rescue

Make Food Not Waste (MFNW), a NextCycle Michigan Partner, is one of the organizations that receives donated food from Metro Food Rescue. They use the food at their Upcycling Kitchens—located at a Presbyterian church and a Salvation Army center that provides services for those suffering from addiction—to create delicious, nutritious, and complete meals for the community.

Danielle Todd, executive director of MFNW said, “Metro Food Rescue is one of our favorite partners and one that we recommend all of the time to potential food donors. We know we can count on them to respond right away and to make the rescue work not only for food donors but also for people like us who rely on regular food donations to serve the community.”

Food Waste Composting in cities & townships

FERNDALE (OAKLAND COUNTY)

The City of Ferndale, in Oakland County, managed a popular pilot food-waste drop-off composting program serving both residential and commercial customers with support from the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator program. With NextCycle’s mentors and consultants, they estimated food waste production and recovery potential, analyzed growth options, researched composting technologies, projected costs, identified grantors, and honed their pitch for further funding.

Building on the success of the pilot, they joined the a second NextCycle Michigan cohort to get help in developing a composting system within the city to process the collected organics.

Claire Dion, former Zero Waste Program Coordinator at the City of Ferndale said of the benefits of the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator, “Having our pitch deck and having completed all of the data collection we were able to do, it really is going to set us up for success in applying for grant opportunities.” 

BEAVER ISLAND - SAINT JAMES & PEAINE TOWNSHIPS (CHARLEVOIX COUNTY)

Saint James and Peaine townships located in Charlevoix County—which, together, encompass Lake Michigan’s Beaver Island—are also worked with NextCycle Michigan to create a composting system for their residents, visitors, and businesses. Beaver Island is the most remote inhabited island in the Great Lakes. It has a year-round population of roughly 600 residents and a summer peak of a few thousand people. There is no regular curbside collection of garbage or recyclables; island residents and businesses must drop it all off at a transfer station and recycling center (TSRC) jointly run by the two townships.

Their location 40 miles from the mainland’s barge dock makes managing materials expensive for the islanders. The island’s property owners pay for waste and recycling services in three ways:

• Fees charged when they drop off waste or bulky items at the TSRC,

• Townships property taxes allocated to support and run the TSRC, and

• Charlevoix County’s recycling millage.

All the island’s recyclable materials and garbage are shipped by barge to the mainland, then a contracted waste hauler moves the waste to a landfill and processes and markets the recyclables. The TSRC pays for the shipping and management of the trash while the county recycling millage pays for the recyclables. 

In two preliminary rounds of technical support—one under an EGLE MICROS grant and another under a federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) Build-to-Scale grant sponsored by NextCycle Michigan and facilitated by the Centrepolis Accelerator at Lawrence Technological University—existing waste and recycling practices were analyzed and opportunities identified for improvements. They found that food-waste composting offered a win-win-win opportunity to

• Save money by decreasing the amount of waste hauled off-island,

• Reduce the climate impact of managing their organic waste, and

• Improve the island’s sandy soil while reducing the amount of compost shipped to the island.

A NextCycle Michigan team from the island then took part in the another Accelerator cohort, working with their NextCycle Michigan coaches and subject matter experts to determine the best composting system for their unique island. They decided on a home-composting model with an estimated implementation cost of $56,000. Municipal food-waste drop-off alternatives they considered came with equipment, facilities, and site costs between $147,100 and $347,100 and annual operating expenses of $40,000 a year or more. Questions about the availability of workers to run and maintain such a composting site on a part-time basis and markets for the finished compost also weighed against these options.

The islanders’ home composting plan puts education out front, beginning in the summer of 2024, followed by implementation of a pilot program with 50 households in Summer/Fall 2024. The 50 pilot households would include 20 renters and 30 owner-occupied units. Each pilot household would receive a 0.75-gallon caddy for collecting compostables in the kitchen, a 65-gallon composting bin for outdoors, and further education. After evaluating the opportunities and challenges identified through the pilot, a full roll out to the remaining 218 occupied households is anticipated in Winter/Spring 2025. The team calculated the potential diversion from disposal of 110 tons a year.

COLLABORATION FOR COMPOST BENEFITS

Detroiter Renee V. Wallace, a longtime process and change consultant serving a variety of businesses and nonprofits, has been following a calling to grow food-scraps composting systems for the benefit of the city for over 15 years. In 2021 she received the prestigious H. Clark Gregory Award from the U.S. Composting Council for outstanding service to the composting industry through grassroots efforts.

Wallace brought together multiple partners to develop a sustainable, equitable system to compost food waste from Wayne State University (WSU) and improve composting at the Georgia Street Community Garden (GSCC). This initiative was assisted by the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator. Renee, along with Mark Covington, president and co-director of GSCC, and the WSU Office of Campus Sustainability (OCS) worked together to get the system up and running.

“We built a program in such a way that it was about integrating two communities, a city, and a campus community,” said Wallace.

• Students taking part in the OCS’s Green Warriors program educated WSU students and staff about composting and collecting the compostables from dining halls and other participating campus locations.

• Leaders at WSU’s Dining Services Department developed efficient systems to collect pre-consumer food scraps for composting.

• The WSU Grounds Services department hauls leaves to GSCC to be blended with the food scraps.

• Covington and his GSCC team manage the composting process.

• Both GSCC and Wayne State use the finished compost.

Through her consulting service, Doer’s Edge, Wallace also supports NextCycle Michigan’s team recruitment and programming.

AUTONOMOUS FOOD WASTE COLLECTION

Ottonomy robot utilized in food waste collection pilot. Image Source: Orange Sparkle Ball

Scrap Soils is a nonprofit organization offering food waste collection service to households and restaurants in City Council districts 4, 5 and 6 of Detroit. They compost this food waste at hyper-local farm partner locations. Scrap Soils and Orange Sparkle Ball (OSB) developed a pilot project using Ottonomy robots to collect food scraps in the Corktown neighborhood.

Explains Ricky Blanding, founder and CEO of Scrap Soils, “Scrap Soils and OSB had a growing partnership in terms of advisory support and goals for the community. OSB was working on autonomous mobility, and together, we conceptualized their first pilot: using robots to pick up food scraps as part of Scrap Soil’s collection service. We continued together, developing the formation of the project, along with the pilot design and funding strategy.”  

The four-week pilot, launched in mid-June 2024. It was funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and ran in the City of Detroit’s Transportation Innovation Zone. The robots delivered the food scraps to Brother Nature Produce’s urban farm where the Scrap Soils team composted them.

Looking back on their NextCycle Michigan Accelerator experience, executive director Ricky Blanding appreciated that Scrap Soils was chosen to take part based on prioritizing equitable access and the team’s demographic appeal to the people in the neighborhoods they serve, despite the organization having limited infrastructure. Once the Accelerator was underway, the regular meetings with their mentors helped clarify the strengths each Scrap Soils team member brought to the table. Knowing this helps Blanding to more accurately delegate to everyone on the team. They also gained experience using project management platforms like Airtable which have proven valuable in extending their workflows.

EDUCATION IS ESSENTIAL

SEEDS Ecology and Education Centers is a nonprofit established in 1999 to implement environmental solutions locally using intersecting expertise in ecology, education, and design. In 2018 SEEDS convened the Northwest Michigan Organic Waste Diversion Advisory Partners (NWMI OWDA). As EGLE began directing Renew Michigan funds toward this arena, implementing NextCycle Michigan, and requiring counties to prepare Sustainable Materials Management Plans—which must address organic wastes—SEEDS has leapt at every opportunity.

2002 EcoCorps Volunteers work on compost piles at the SEEDS farm at historic Barns Park in Travese City. Image Source: SEEDS

In 2021 they commissioned a market assessment covering 10 counties from Missaukee County north to Emmet County and west to Lake Michigan. The report was funded by Rotary Charities of Traverse City and EGLE’s Recycling Market Development grant program. At the same time, SEEDS took part in a NextCycle Accelerator cohort to further develop their community-scale food-waste drop-off model and prepare to access funding to expand capacity across the region to collect, haul and process organics.

The 134-page market assessment report was released early 2022 and provides all stakeholders with a rich understanding of food scraps, yard waste and woody debris generated in the region; existing diversion efforts and infrastructure from food rescue to composting; the ecosystem of stakeholders; and value-added marketable opportunities.

Next steps identified for the six core NOMI OWDA partners are well underway. Their goal for the region of cutting food waste by 30% by 2030 parallels EGLE’s goal of reducing wasted food by 50% by 2030. SEEDS is continuing with their convening and educational roles, for example by developing a demonstration and training center. Their NextCycle Michigan pitch sought funding for a Food Waste Diversion Director position and to train and deploy three more food waste team members.

LARGE SCALE COMPOSTING

NextCycle Michigan Partner Denali is an organics management company with over two dozen locations across the United States. Denali has been active in Michigan producing and selling compost and mulch in partnership with the city of Grand Rapids since 2020 and  at the City of Ann Arbor compost facility since 2011.

Denali’s Ann Arbor operation grew with the city program when Ann Arbor began offering food-scraps collection in 2014. Today the city offers single-family residential properties a free 64- or 96-gallon compost cart for yard and food wastes, while commercial entities can subscribe for food-waste collection with fees based on the number of carts and frequency of pick up. As of 2020 17% of total waste generated in Ann Arbor—roughly 12,000 tons—was diverted through composting.

FILLING THE GAPS

NextCycle Michigan Accelerator teams and network partners are making inspiring progress toward meeting the need to recover good food and make the most of unusable food. But this is just the beginning: there is vast opportunity to collect, redirect, and process food scraps in Michigan.

The Michigan Food Waste Roadmap released in March 2024 by the Michigan Sustainable Business Forum reported that to reach the State’s goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030, “...the amount of donated food in the charitable food system must double, while not distracting from efforts to address root causes of food insecurity.”  The roadmap also found that “…substantially more surplus food is managed through Michigan charities than through its commercial compost facilities.” Similarly, the 2023 NextCycle Michigan Gap Analysis indicates that over 100 more composting sites are needed to process organics to meet the state’s goals.