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Food Scrap Management
Did you know that each American throws away an average of 1.3 pounds of food scraps every day? Each year, residents in Ohio generate enough food scraps to pile on a football field over a half mile high! Food scrap waste generated by all households in the United States could be piled on a football field more than 15 miles high.
The top two portions of the U.S. waste stream (paper and yard waste) have been successfully diverted from landfills through recycling and composting efforts, with recovery rates of 50 percent and 62 percent, respectively. Paling in comparison, the food scrap recovery rate is less than three percent.
Across the nation states are exploring ways to reduce pollution and encourage alternative methods of waste management such as recycling. Although some food scrap management programs are being implemented at the local level (universities, business locations, etc.), more can be done to help reduce the need for food scrap disposal.
Ohio EPA has developed this Web site and accompanying brochure to identify resources that you might find helpful when deciding whether to implement programs to address food scraps. There are several options to help address food scraps, including:
- Preventing the generation of food scraps.
- Converting food scraps to animal feed.
- Composting.
Of these, preventing food scraps from being generated in the first place is the preferred approach, and we encourage you to explore these pollution prevention (P2) options as a first step in your planning. Implementing P2 practices can help you more efficiently run your food service operations, save money and reduce disposal costs. If you do need to manage food scraps, there may be other options, such as converting waste to animal feed or composting.
U.S. EPA has developed a food waste recovery hierarchy that shows how to put excess food to productive use. The food waste recovery  hierarchy comprises the following activities, with disposal as the final option:
- Source Reduction – Reduce the volume of food waste generated
- Feed People – Donate extra food to food banks, soup kitchens and shelters
- Feed Animals – Provide food to farmers
- Industrial Uses – Provide fats for rendering and food discards for animal feed production
- Composting – Convert food scraps into a nutrient rich soil amendment
We hope you find the resource links on this Web site helpful and we plan to update it with new information and resources as these become available.
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