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Dear Umbra,
Are any communities collecting food waste -- potato peels, meat scraps, corn husks, etc. -- for recycling? Is there a market for such material?
Wendy S. Far Hills, N.J.
Dearest Wendy,
Yes and yes. Multiple communities collect food waste, in a variety of ways. Which is great, considering that food makes up about 12 percent of our garbage discards and is perfectly recyclable. The proper end to food scraps is rebirth as compost, wherein the nutrients stored in the foods will be returned to the soil and made available to the next generation of plants. You know, in one of those magical cycles of life. There are all sorts of similarities to be drawn between financial banks and the soil bank, mainly that if we keep withdrawing nutrients from the soil bank in the form of food, and then do not return those nutrients to the soil in the form of compost, we will have no nutrients left in our soil bank account. Then we have to buy nutrients on credit, via petroleum-based fertilizers, but the interest rate, so to speak, is punitive. I'll stop my little metaphor there.
Humans don't tend to value the soil bank as much as they do the money bank, but fortunately diverting food and yard waste from the waste stream also makes financial sense (and reduces landfill methane emissions, as previously discussed).
Full Story: http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2008/11/10/?source=daily
