By Kate Worley
Part 2: Making the Business Case for Food Waste Recycling
Food waste is a topic increasingly recognized for its impacts economically, socially, and environmentally. For businesses that sell food products, after a focus on prevention, upcycling and donation, recycling should be the next step in responsibly managing wasted food. Employees may also be personally invested and purpose-driven to reduce waste, and seeing wasted food every day becomes that impetus to champion food waste recycling initiatives. For those businesses that don’t have an organics recycling program, employees may want to take action in making the business case. If you have already read our blog Part 1: Making the Business Case for Food Waste Recycling, you learned a few tips to building a successful business case at your company. Now, let’s talk about a few myths you might encounter when attempting to socialize your business case and a few ways to address each argument.
Myth #1: Food waste recycling costs more; added cost to the P&L won’t be approved
- Food waste recycling costs can vary widely, often based on factors like location, outlet type and local landfill tip fees. There also might be local or state incentives to recycle food waste, such as a landfill tax or a lower tip fee on recycling. Often those managing recycling programs and invoices are not aware of these costs, which can make recycling a better financial case.
- It is important to consider ALL of your business costs applicable to a program if comparing apples to apples. For example, if your company owns compactors, then it’s important to factor in equipment costs, maintenance, and leak clean ups – which might all be managed on different P&Ls. Compare those total trash management costs with an all-inclusive service such as food recycling, where the service provider owns and maintains equipment and containers. In addition, if diverting food from the compactor to recycling, you should see compactor cost and service reduction.
- Managing materials to prioritize upstream reduction, reuse/recovery, and recycling means considering your whole waste management program. Movement within that decision tree means that a certain material might be disposed in a certain pathway one day, and in another the next. So, tracking the program in its entirety will show not only your opportunities in a certain waste stream, but it will give a total financial view. For example, the money saved through food waste reduction and upcycling, the tax benefits gained through donations, and the compactor expense reduction by diverting more materials are important parts of a whole food program. All of this information, along with your food waste recycling cost, is the best way to comprehensively look at your total financials.
Myth #2: Adding food recycling will increase my labor cost
- “Waste” – whether it’s solid waste, energy, water, or time (labor) – is inefficiency for a business. But it’s also inevitable. Assigning labor to a task as a whole is important to track, but even more important is the efficiency within that labor. How efficient is the task being done, is there room for improvement? What is food waste recycling being compared to – landfilling? Donation? It might be surprising to actually do a validated labor study to see how many hours are actually used for each task versus the perception.
- Manually depackaging food waste can be labor intensive, as can the “touches” to scan out the product for disposal, recycling, and donation. Mechanical depackaging is a technology that has become more accessible in the U.S. over the last decade. By moving depackaging offsite, a retailer, restaurant, or other food waste generator can reduce labor allocated to that specific task, allowing that labor to be focused on more value-add tasks that service customers or sell product. Therefore, recycling food waste should not be more labor-intensive than landfilling so it should be an easy decision. Instead of placing in the compactor, place all unsold, edible food in the recycling bin. No manual depackaging necessary.
Myth #3: If we start a food waste recycling program, it will distract from other food waste prevention and recovery initiatives
Referring back to previous comments about a comprehensive waste reduction and recycling program, consider waste a mindset. If expectations are set, and combined with training and accountability, there should not be a distraction. The goal will be to push upstream food waste reduction and recovery, with any remaining waste being recycled. The reality is that there will always be “food waste,” however if material is managed correctly following the U.S. EPA Wasted Food Scale hierarchy, the priority should always include recycling as an important step in the process.
Myth #4: Food waste causes odor and pests
Let’s be honest. Food is organic, so yes it will cause some odor. And pests are attracted to food both in its fresh state as well as when it’s no longer edible. However, arguing that food is going to cause more odor and pests in an organics recycling bin than in a compactor is not necessarily accurate. It’s all in how you manage the material. The first consideration is that “you don’t have to manage what you don’t generate,” therefore a focus on food waste reduction is always important. Keeping food in packaging when its collected (i.e., utilizing a mechanical depackaging service if available in your area) helps with both odor and pests. Tracking which food items are being placed in the bin can help too – for example, meats might need to be held in the cooler until the day of service. Being aware of temperature (such as heat) and seasonality (that can cause pests) can help put a focus on extra bin cleaning, pest treatments that are safe for recycling food waste, and requesting extra services if needed.
If you want to apply these learnings to better build your business case for food recycling, read Part 1: Making the Business Case for Food Waste Recycling for more information.
If you are a business or manufacturer that would like to learn more about recycling your food byproducts or other organic waste streams, contact Denali for more information. We can help you set up a customized program to fit your service needs, organic waste streams, and provide the best value.
About Denali
Denali is a leading expert and recycler in the U.S. organics recycling industry. In food waste alone, Denali was responsible for managing over 1.7 billion pounds of food waste from retail, foodservice, and industrial food processors in 2023. In recognizing the impact that food waste has on the climate, Denali is committed to working with customers to find innovative, data-driven solutions to reduce waste on the front end. Denali views what others consider “waste” as a valuable resource, manages multiple recycling facilities in the U.S., and has a sizeable fleet to transport organic wastes to a diverse network of recyclers. As a contributor to the circular economy, Denali closes the loop by producing valuable products from recycled organics, including animal feed, biodiesel, compost, tire lubricants, and mulch.
K
ate Worley is Vice President of Sustainability at Denali. She has worked for more than a decade with some of the largest companies in the world to drive sustainability and reduce waste.