• Waste beginning its journey in Spokane city, United States
Kelly Hansen from Spokane city in the US state of Washington, compares how ‘waste’ is managed there with other places.
Kelly has been interning with Sustainable House and it’s terrific to see ‘waste’ through her eyes - thank you, Kelly.
Food waste diversion is a great way to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill, reduce methane gas production, and keep our soil healthy.
The US state of Vermont has shown their commitment to the environment and community by banning food waste in June 2020.
As a citizen of a community that’s actively creating a new sustainability action plan in the state of Washington, I wanted to get a better perspective on what Vermont did, what the consequences have been, and how my city compares.
• Left flag marks Spokane, Washington Right flag marks Burlington, Vermont
Vermont and Spokane have similar climates. Vermont is wetter and slightly colder, but we both have to deal with more snow than most United States areas. One of the problems discussed around composting in Spokane was that compost material would freeze in the bottom of bins or truck and we wouldn’t be able to dump it at the compost facility. But if Vermont hasn’t had this problem, where it’s typically colder, then there must be a work around for Spokane too.
• Date found here
I’ve lived in Spokane Washington my whole life. We have one of the only Waste-To-Energy facilities in the Pacific North West. When WTE facilities first became popular it sounded like a good idea. It was better than putting it all in a landfill and we were repurposing our waste to create cheap energy. In 2019 the facility sold 17 megawatts of energy to local electric companies. It also reduced the contamination in the Spokane River and Aquifer - although the river contamination levels are still too high for consumption of local fish.
Because, when something is burned the only thing left is ash, the WTE facility has been boasting since the 90’s that it’s a clean-energy facility that diverts city waste from the landfill by 90%. The WTE facility brought something with it. To create community buy-in, a top-of-the-line recycling center was build next to it and mandatory, weekly recycling pick-up added to the city services.
In 2012 this facility hit a bump. China placed stricter contamination limits on recyclables forcing Spokane to spend half a million dollars on reducing local contamination rates from 13% to 5%. This meant we had to stop collection of a lot of items and instead send them to the WTE facility.
Most people didn’t see this as a problem, but as Washington law makers debate declassifying WTE facilities as sustainable, city officials and employees are getting anxious.
What are we going to do with all that waste? How are we going to fund such a drastic change?
Fortunately, President Biden is increasing regulation requirements, hoping for 100% clean energy by 2050, and investing trillions in clean energy over the next decade. This should give the city even more incentive to lead the way to better practices and away from the WTE plant.
In Australia, the ACT (Australian Capitol Territory) is already ahead of these goals. They’ve decided to follow the waste hierarchy guide and ban the burning of waste. Their focus will mostly be on waste minimization and composting.
• Food Recovery Hierarchy
I can’t speak for all the trash, but in my community organic waste accounts for over 35% of all waste going to the WTE plant. This type of waste is wet, making it harder to burn. When comparing WTE facilities and landfills, WTE wins hands down. Even when looking at something like food waste that’s so difficult to burn, it reduces the time that it would be sitting around producing methane gas, which is 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. But it’s still emitting greenhouse gases and therefore still contributing to the climate problem.
• Recycling and compost bins on side of road in Spokane snow for collection - Photo Kelly Hansen
The next best solution to the WTE facility is composting. In my community we already have an optional green bin service set-up. Residents can pay an extra $17.79/month, year-round, to have a green bin, but it’s only collected in the spring and summer months. This is better than nothing, and because you have it all year, you can still add to it during the winter, but if it gets full and you put in on the curb to be emptied it will go straight to the WTE facility for a $5 fee. If you leave it sit all winter with your daily food scraps it’s releasing methane gas because there’s most likely not the right browns to greens ratio to create a productive compost pile. The ratio should be about 5:1 and since most browns come from yard clipping this is hard to hit in the winter at the residential level.
When comparing Spokane’s waste system and associated costs to other pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) systems, you’ll see that in PAYT systems residents have more control and incentive to reduce their waste production and compost or recycle correctly.
As a family of 4 my household has a 32-gallon bag. We don’t live very different from others, even recently started using disposable diapers. If you include the added diaper waste, we still usually have space left over in the smallest trash bin. What bothers me the most is if you break down the cost in Spokane by price per gallon, the 68-gallon, medium bin, is the best price. There is little incentive to produce less waste and with an extra bag only costing $4.36 there isn’t much of a price to pay to produce in excess. Although the trash and recycling on average is more than Spokane, based on my family usage we would pay about $160 in Vermont per year compared to the about $440 we currently pay. My city just reduced recycling to every other week to keep costs low for customers. But if we switched to a system closer to Vermont the savings would be massive for most.
According to the Environment Protection Authority, PAYT programs support environmental and economic sustainability while increasing equity in communities.
In 2009 Spokane organized a group of community volunteers to come up with an Sustainability Action Plan. In the end only one measurable goal was created - Reach 100% renewable energy by 2030. At the time this goal was allowed to include the WTE plant as renewable energy. The city put together another volunteer group in April 2019 that would develop a more involved plan including 3-5 key action items in 8 different sectors. The plan hasn’t been released for public viewing yet but will soon be releasing it’s first draft.
This sequence of events is far from Sydney, which continuously updates its sustainability plan and has a very involved community and government. But we’re hoping to catch up with the rest of the world. To learn more about Sydney’s plans go here.
I’ve been part of the waste and recycling volunteer group that’s focused on sustainable solutions, so we’re prepared when the WTE facility ultimately needs to shut down. Hopefully in the next few decades. We are proposing that the city start to collect organics every week, all year and to help people learn to compost their kitchen scraps, not just their yard debris, we will also be rolling out a kitchen sized green bin. In the beginning there will be some upfront costs, but not nearly as much as building another top-of-the-line plant that will be a short-term solution. The local city composting facility, Barr-Tech, has been requesting for years to increase food waste in the green bins. They’re having a hard time collecting enough nitrogen rich inputs for optimal composting conditions. The increase in food waste will give the necessary balance increasing their revenues, increasing local soil quality, and decreasing the WTE inputs by about 35%. Although we’re just a volunteer group and haven’t gotten the green light from city council, we’re hopeful that because of the coming legislation the city will be required to move in this direction.
• Spokane Barr-Tech Composting Facility Aerial View
There has been a lot of push back with this plan. I’m sure like many cities, my officials don’t like change especially when it’s tied to something as politically polarizing as climate change. We’ve even recently been told we have to change our group name from Spokane Zero Waste to Spokane Waste and Recycling because of the negative connotations zero waste can be associated with. But I have more faith than that in our community and fear if we don’t make the change now it will simply be forced once legislation catches up with the times, or worse impossible due to damage from increasing risk of natural disaster. Why not change on our own terms?
The UN supports the diversion of food waste to compost bins and other uses as well. They estimate that one third of all food produced is wasted and contributes 3.3 billion tons of CO2 per year. This makes it the third top emitter, just behind the United States and China.
• UN Climate solutions report in numbers
Vermont had this very idea and fortunately they have paved the way for my city to feel a little less wary of the unknown. In 2012 Vermont passed The Universal Recycling Law to ban all food waste by 2020. They started small, but meaningful. In 2014 the first step was implemented. Anyone who produced 2 or more tons of food waste in a week was required to divert it from the trash bin. They continued to reduce the tonnage requirements until finally including all food waste in Vermont. Because they steadily increased the amount of food waste being added to the compost facilities, they we able to increase the number of facilities as needed and never ran into the problem of having too much food waste for the state to handle. Residential adoption rate has been flourishing. One composting company saw a bin collection rate increase from 96 the month before the law passed to 231 just two months later and since the beginning of the law, Vermont food scrap haulers have increased from 12 to 30, with more scheduled in the coming year.
Because the law hasn’t been in effect very long, there isn’t much data on the benefits specifically to Vermont. But if science is to be trusted, Vermont can expect greenhouse gas production to decrease, soil quality to increase, and even see Vermonters start to get smarter about what and how much food they buy at one time. No one likes seeing their hard-earned money going to the compost pile and it’s easier to notice when you have a bin dedicated to it.
Spokane is slightly different from Vermont. Before the food waste ban, Spokane was doing better compared to Vermont because we burn our organic matter. But Vermont has stepped up the expectations for the rest of the country. If they can do it so can we. With all those extra composting facilities that will pop-up to meet demand, we shouldn’t have any problem recouping the cost or lost jobs associated with closing the WTE facility. Also, when comparing Vermont’s waste characterization study to Spokane’s you’ll see that although organic waste is the biggest single contributor for both areas, Vermont is at 24% whereas Spokane is at a whopping 35%.
• Data collected from 2019 Spokane route hauling information
• Vermont 2018 waste characterization study; DSM environmental 2018. C&D- Construction and Demolition Debris HHW- Household Hazardous Waste
For a look at another United States community example of where they burn waste, check out Savannah Kajer’s blog post and follow-up post about Minneapolis’s WTE plant. The following chart is from her assessment of Minneapolis’s waste characterization.
• Hennepin County waste composition studies at Hennepin Energy Recovery Center and Brooklyn Park Transfer Station
So we have even more reason to divert it to the compost pile. Ultimately composting isn’t the golden goose we’re looking for. Climate change is a wicked problem and will need many solutions that can come together to work against it. But it’s low hanging fruit that’s cost effective and possible in any community. Even freezing climates such as Spokane Washington or the state of Vermont or Minneapolis can compost food waste.
Kelly.