The City of Austin aims to be a zero waste city by 2040, which means that all materials that can be recycled or composted are diverted from landfills and sent to their proper treatment facilities. As a part of this zero waste goal, the city implemented a ordinance requiring all food sellers in Austin to have a Organics Diversion Plan (ODP) in place.
Part of the initiative is to provide educational materials for commercial food sellers and their employees. The City organized free training events for restaurant owners and their employees to learn about the ordinance, as well as the negative ramifications of sending organic and recyclable materials to landfills.
“To help restaurants transition, the Austin Resource Recovery staff has compiled resources, such as signs and educational materials, that businesses can use to share with employees,” said Tom Gleason, senior planner at Austin Resource Recovery. “The goal of these trainings is to provide business owners and managers with all the information and resources they need to be successful.”
Austin Resource Recovery is helping businesses get everything in order to meet the city’s rules for food waste. Dan Martinez, the project management director for Murphy Adams Restaurant Group, which oversees operations for Austin restaurants like Mama Fu’s and Austin’s Pizza, details how helpful the city has been in providing necessary information.
“The Business Outreach Team from Austin Resource Recovery have been tremendous partners in helping us prepare for this ordinance,” Martinez said. “We attended one [training] program run through the Greater Austin Restaurant Association.”
At these training events, businesses learn how to properly submit their Organics Diversion Plan (ODP) to the city by the due date of Feb. 1, 2019. Martinez details how their restaurants are addressing their ODP.
“We are primarily focused on prevention of over-ordering and over-preparing as a means to reduce organics from reaching landfills,” Martinez said. “By making sure that we only prepare what we need, we reduce the chance of prepared food going past its shelf life.”
While Martinez’s restaurants are working internally to address the Organic Diversion Plan, there are some outside organizations that aid restaurants in diverting their organic waste.
“We are however working with one outside organization to trial a composting solution in one of our restaurants,” Martinez said. “We have designated collection buckets for our organic waste that is collected and turned into chicken feed.”
Turning organic waste into chicken feed is not the only option for restaurants. Keep Austin Fed is a non-profit that rescues perishable food items from commercial food permitted businesses. They work directly with businesses to help them divert their leftover food products to people in need.
“There does have to be that sort of desire to do the right thing,” said Lisa Barden, program director for Keep Austin Fed. “But I also think that this policy helps drive education about why we don't want it all going into a landfill.”
Keep Austin Fed has between 70 to 80 scheduled runs every week, which are pre-arranged with their regular donors. On top of the scheduled runs, Barden will also get unplanned calls from restaurants, or even catering companies.
“Sometimes they'll just call us and say, ‘hey, we have 150 sandwiches leftover from this event, can y'all come pick them up?’” Barden said. “We’ll send a volunteer out to go pick it up and take it to an organization that can use it.”
While this process turns leftover food into the hands of people who are in need, it is not always the most environmentally efficient course of action.
“It's a little bit hard, because we have to balance the carbon footprint of going to pick up the food, verses the footprint of throwing away the food,” Barden said. “So, if it's like five tacos, it may not be worth our gas to go pick it up and deliver it somewhere across town.”
A primary concern for restaurants and organizations like Keep Austin Fed is making sure the quality of food is good enough to be repurposed. Luckily, restaurants are protected from liability in regards to donating leftover foods.
“The businesses are all protected by this good samaritan act. It's a federal law,” said Barden. “As long as you're donating food in good faith, you're protected liability wise. And so we kind of remind the businesses about that.”
Good faith means that you are knowledgeable that the food has been kept temperature safe until pick-up, and that it was edible quality food at the time of donation.
For Barden, quality checks on food are something that happens naturally at Keep Austin Fed.
“We kind of rely on the fact that we've got the donors eyes on it, we've got our volunteers eyes on it, and we've had our recipient organizations eyes on it,” Barden said. “So, that's three sets of eyes that are looking at this food to determine that it's edible quality versus compostable quality.”
Not only is feeding people in need a priority for Keep Austin Fed, they also want to see Austin achieve its 2040 zero waste goal.
“I think it's the right first step to getting the city to be zero waste,” Barden said. “I think once people start to realize it's important and why it's important, they'll start to adhere to it more. I think it's really a lot easier than people are making it out to be.”
Comments