Top: After digestion, organics sorted from mixed municipal waste are composted at the GreenWaste facility in Gilroy (CA), a High Diversion Organic Waste Processing Facility. Photo courtesy of GreenWaste Most organics recycling facilities in California process separated loads of organic waste streams to help meet the state’s organics diversion law, S.B. 1383. For facilities designed to recover the organic fraction from incoming loads of mixed municipal solid waste (MSW), CalRecycle created a separate category — High Diversion Organic Waste Processing Facilities (HDOWPF) — to distinguish them fr ..read more

Top: The Trenton Biogas facility in Trenton, New Jersey is a stand-alone food waste anaerobic digester that receives pre and postconsumer feedstocks. Photo courtesy of Trenton Renewables The American Biogas Council’s (ABC) latest Data Digest focuses on stand-alone food waste anaerobic digesters, such as Trenton Biogas in Trenton (NJ) and the Bioenergy Devco facility in Jessup (MD). According to ABC, the U.S. has 109 stand-alone biogas facilities utilizing food waste as their primary feedstock — 5% of all 2,401 operational biogas systems and 6% of all operational anaerobic digester projects. Of ..read more

Top: Close to one-third of all compost sold in the U.S. by volume goes to conventional and organic agriculture. Photo courtesy of Recology The Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s (ILSR) Composting for Community Initiative released its new Composting Policy Resource Hub on April 30. The Hub, a suite of policymaking resources to help advance local decentralized composting, features pro-composting policy guidance, materials, and ready-to-use advocacy tools. ILSR notes that the “Policy Resource Hub aims to provide guidance and equip policymakers, advocates, community organizations, compost facilit ..read more

Top: Overview of Brady Trucking’s yard and food waste composting facility. Photos courtesy of Brady Trucking Nora Goldstein Brady Trucking Company in Shelton, Washington, has run a successful mulch production facility and trucking company for decades. It was started by Jeff and Nancy Brady in 1982, hauling bark, wood chips and sawdust in Washington and Oregon. Raw bark is purchased from mills and hauled to Brady Trucking’s manufacturing facility where it is processed into finished landscaping products. “For years we’ve been purchasing compost in bulk to have availability for our mulch clients ..read more

Top: A PFAS-free pizza box is more likely to absorb grease. Photo by Alex Lozupone, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and manipulated by BioCycle). In late February, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced that grease-proofing materials containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are no longer being sold for use in food packaging in the U.S. “The major source of dietary exposure to PFAS from food packaging like fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, take-out paperboard containers and pet food bags is being eliminated,” noted the FDA in its announceme ..read more

Top: Compost screening at municipal yard trimmings facility. Photo by Doug Pinkerton ​For many years, state agencies in Minnesota that use compost have expressed concerns over the lack of standards for compost used in their projects. “The discussion focused on the lack of consistent quality of compost products created from yard waste and yard waste/food waste products,” explains the Minnesota Composting Council (MNCC), which commissioned a White Paper, Standardizing Compost by Defining Properties, Products and Systems in Minnesota.  “Of particular concern was immature compost that damaged ..read more

Top: Manual sorting of municipal solid waste.  Photo courtesy SCS Engineers, Madison, WI The U.S. EPA, on behalf of the Global Methane Initiative (GMI), developed a Waste Characterization Handbook and accompanying Excel tool to help decision-makers and solid waste professionals plan and conduct waste characterization studies to evaluate waste stream compositions. The Handbook targets city decision-makers and solid waste professionals. It includes recommended activities and resources to help plan an appropriate type of study for specific site conditions; conduct field activities to collect ..read more

Top: Tip floor at WM CORe facility at Varick transfer station in Brooklyn with collected residential and commercial NYC organics. Romy Carpenter and Andrew Carpenter The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) worked with Northern Tilth, LLC to complete an assessment of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) associated with five separate management options for source separated organics (SSO), a combination of residential food scraps and organics collected from commercial and institutional sources. This article assesses SSO management options that are currently available to New Y ..read more

Top: The compost-amended Phase 3 Bioswale under the Aurora Bridge in Seattle can treat 1.9 million gallons of storm water annually. Photo by Site Story Sally Brown Compost and urban soils are a match made in heaven. Composts give urban soil the organic matter it needs to help plants grow. It soaks in storm water, making those same urban soils more drought resistant. With compost, lawns are watered once a week instead of once a day. Forget those ChemLawn (now TruGreen) trucks. The compost will also keep lawns green and lush. What is not to love? That is what the compost producers say. Too often ..read more

Top: Packaged food items awaiting depackaging prior to digestion with dairy manure. Photo courtesy Reinford Farms, Mifflintown, Pennsylvania The Northeast Waste Management Officials’ Association, the Northeast Recycling Council, Clean & Healthy New York, and the Connecticut Coalition for Economic and Environmental Justice received a U.S. EPA grant in 2022 to develop guidance and training on environmental justice (EJ) engagement and regulatory compliance to support anaerobic digestion (AD) of food waste in communities in the Northeast. The project deliverables, “Anaerobic Digestion & En ..read more