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Food Waste and the Circular Economy in New York City



Food Waste and the Circular Economy in New York City

Before the pandemic, we had brown plastic airtight bins for our food waste in the basement of our apartment building in Morningside Heights. They are collected by the New York City Department of Sanitation and brought to an aerobic digester that converts food waste into fertilizer and methane. Mayor de Blasio ended the practice amid the pandemic scare, but it still hasn’t resumed. The city’s curbside compost collection has resumed in four community board districts in Queens and Brooklyn, one in the Bronx and two in Manhattan. About one-third of the 24 million pounds of waste New York City generates each day is food and other organic waste. This offers great potential for diverting waste from landfills.

Food waste is an environmental disaster that can easily be turned into an environmental solution.according to Eric Goldstein Natural Resources Defense Council:

“The vast majority of the food scraps and yard waste that the city throws away goes to landfills or incinerators. But when buried in landfills, these organic materials decompose and release methane, a very Effective global warming gas… New Yorkers have another problem with the current system of combining food waste with other trash that New Yorkers put on the curb for the sanitation department to collect: the black bags that contain this perishable mixed waste provide the city with Rats that are becoming more and more unscrupulous in the Finished compost rich in nutrients and similar to rich garden soil.Finished compost is used as a soil supplement to reduce the need for chemical fertilizers, prevent erosion, help retain moisture and aid in the growth of crops, street trees and houseplants… Another option that is preferable to landfilling or incineration is to send collected food scraps and yard waste into an anaerobic digester. Like composting, anaerobic digestion is a natural process that uses bacteria to break down organic matter. But unlike composting, , anaerobic digestion is carried out in sealed tanks.In this case, the breakdown of organic matter produces “biogas”, mainly methane, which can be captured and used to replace natural gas produced by fossil fuels.

For a city with a lot of food waste like New York, composting would probably require too much land to be practical, and in our case we would need to build several large anaerobic digesters.In addition to biogas, digesters also produce biogas residues, according to Environmental Protection AgencyYes:

“…the residue left after the digestion process. It consists of a liquid and a solid part…With proper treatment, both the solid and liquid parts of the digestate can be used in many beneficial applications, such as animal litter (solid), rich in Nutritious fertilizers (liquid and solid), base materials for bio-based products (e.g. bioplastics), compost rich in organic matter (solid) and/or simply as soil amendments (solid), the latter may include digestate Spread it on the fields as fertilizer.”

The gas and fertilizer produced by the digester have economic value and can help pay for waste disposal. Still, advances in waste management always seem to be losing the race for the city’s budget. I have reason to believe that rats love sloppy food management, but I don’t see why our city government can’t make food waste recycling a higher priority. Mayor Adams was unimpressed by the food waste plan he saw when he arrived at City Hall — which is fair — but the pace of implementation since he took office appears to have been slow. I wonder if much effort has gone into finding a private sector partner to monetize fertilizer and biogas produced from anaerobic digestion. A system could be put in place to produce new facilities to reduce the cost of waste transportation and landfill dumping charges, and recover some of the revenue from food waste products. The sheer volume of urban food waste may make this economically viable. And that doesn’t include commercial food waste from restaurants and other for-profit businesses that serve food. The combination of the Ministry of Health and the private Carter program is worth exploring.

The Queens effort is billed as the first step in a citywide effort.according to anne barnard of New York Times: “Municipal organic waste goes to a facility in Newtown Creek, which turns it into renewable energy, and goes to a municipal composting facility in Staten Island, where it’s turned into soil for use in parks and community gardens or sold in bulk.” When As food waste recycling covers more areas of the city and leads to higher participation rates, its cost-efficiency will increase, as will the demand for larger-scale use of food waste products.

Food waste presents an opportunity for New York City to put itself at the forefront of recycling. Unlike other forms of waste sorting at source, food is easily separated from other household waste. The airtight container doubles as a rat control measure, an aspect that appeals to the food waste recycling building staff. The capital cost of a new facility can be covered by reduced landfill dumping fees, or by revenue generated from fertilizer and biogas.

The act of sorting waste can help people understand the amount of waste we generate and the need to find productive uses for this waste. Turning waste into wealth is the core concept of circular economy, which transforms the linear production mode of “production, use, and waste” into a circular economic model that makes the best use of everything. My own view is that a true circular economy must be built on automated systems of reuse rather than voluntary, manual separation of materials. July 2021, I wrote it:

“In the long term, [waste circularity] …will be done with automated waste sorting machines that sort mixed waste for reuse. Recycling at the household level is a great educational tool for raising public awareness of the waste we generate, but it is an inefficient and flawed method of separating materials for reuse. Recycled waste is often contaminated, and uncertain demand for recycled materials often results in recycled waste ending up in landfills or incinerators. We cannot rely on current collection methods and technologies if we are to achieve the goals of a circular economy and near-zero waste. Fortunately, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence are helping to advance waste sorting technology at a rapid pace. The capital cost of these technologies and lack of track record of use in the real world are barriers to implementation, but many cities are already using automated waste sorting technology, and more cities will follow. “

I recognized that our streets, lined with black plastic bags of rat-attracting trash, seemed nothing like the world of sealed trash containers and automated trash sorting and mining facilities. Nonetheless, the increasing capital and overhead costs of waste collection and treatment provide a revenue stream for modernizing and reimagining waste management systems. A city that had the audacity to buy large tracts of land north of the city to create a water system that still provides a good supply of clean water should be able to develop a waste disposal and mining system that could be a circular base economy.

This long-term solution will take decades. In the short term, I’d be content with creating a citywide food waste disposal and recycling system based on existing technologies like sealed plastic bins and anaerobic digestion and composting. We need to start somewhere, so let’s start by extending what we’ve already managed to do.




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