Much of social media is nasty, as we all know, but there are places where it is charming. One of those is the Reddit subgroup about composting.
Yes, composting.
Every day people from around the world post pictures on the group showing their pile of rotting food in the backyard, or wooden pallets they’ve nailed together to hold their pile of rotting food, or a thermometer indicating that their pile of rotting food is spontaneously generating lots of heat. And everybody else on the sub will comment “nice job!” or give a thumbs-up emoji, sometimes with advice about adding dead leaves.
It’s like a group of old people admiring each other’s grandchild photos. Charming!
I mention this partly because I’ve long been a fan of composting – my compost piles are old enough to vote – but also because I learned of a company called Biogreen360 based in Stratham that sells a machine to improve the process for restaurants. And that made me think about society’s view of composting.
The idea of letting your food scraps turn back into dirt was once seen as merely a farmland practice or a tree-hugger hobby but it’s starting to become part of standard waste disposal. About time, too.
The BioGreen360 is basically a smart bin. Kitchens put scraps from plates or food prep into it and shut the lid, and it uses enzymes and heat to reduce the material to a pre-compost material and liquid that is picked up by the company and taken to a facility where it can quickly be composted. Importantly, the system doesn’t discharge wastewater into the drainage system, which makes it easier to place inside crowded kitchens.
This is not an at-home option. Their smallest customer generates about 100 pounds a week, said Rick Cochrane, chief commercial officer for BioGreen360, and most generate far more. It has contracts with places like hospitality groups and big hotels.
Cochrane said the value of BioGreen360 doesn’t come from avoiding the expense of trash pickup since costs are “comparable.” Rather, it fits into the increasing need to meet customers’ desires to do business with places that act in sustainable ways and, perhaps more importantly, weighs and analyzes what is placed into the bin. That provides information that helps kitchen managers know what’s being eaten and what isn’t so they can tweak their servings, cutting down on leftovers.
“If you don’t create the waste, that’s the best way. We can help you do this,” he said.
Biogreen360 – not to be confused with BioGreen, a lawn care company – was founded in Portsmouth in 2010. Early generations of the device tested technologies like microwaves to speed up the breakdown of organic material, Cochrane said, but now it uses what it calls a “waterless distributed digester” with proprietary bio-catalysis. It is headquartered in Stratham, with manufacturing outsourced to Maine.
Its business model is composting as a service, charging customers on a per-pound basis rather than selling the devices outright.
Getting more responsible with our garbage is necessary not only because throwing it out is a waste of good nutrients that can help our soil but fills up very expensive landfills. By some estimates, a third of America’s trash is organic material that could be returned to the earth.
There’s also a climate-change cost. Organics placed in oxygen-poor landfills release methane, a bad greenhouse gas, whereas organics in well-aerated compost don’t.
“The landfills have done a good job figuring out how to capture (methane from) the old stuff that’s in there but when you can separate it out before it gets there, that’s when you can make a real difference on methane release,” said Cochrane.
That spur of climate-change goals led Vermont to be the first to tackle the food-waste issue statewide. Its Universal Recycling Law (Act 148) bans food from being thrown out in the trash, with some exceptions for messy items like meat and grease.
The goal is to create a circular system, with unused food turning into compost that grows new food.
BioGreen360 says they have demonstrated that they can do this. Over the years while testing their machines they have taken some 40 tons of food waste from Gather, a Portsmouth food pantry, and turned it into material that is sent to Black Earth Compost in Massachusetts. They used it to create compost which is sent to the Seacoast YMCA, which uses it to grow food that is donated to Gather. Round and round it goes.
In a world where recycling claims often fall short – plastic waste, I’m looking at you – this is a refreshing change. A thumbs-up emoji is not inappropriate.
David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com.
