Agenda - 04-19-2011 - Information Item 1

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.~ n ~o rya ~- i o n ~-I' ~, rrl Memorandum To: Frank Clifton, County Manager From: Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Director Subject: Food Waste Collection at Local Schools Date: Apri14, 2011 At the suggestion of the Board of County Commissioners, the Solid Waste Management Department contacted Orange County Public Schools and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to explore food and organic waste collection at each school's cafeteria. Staff met with both school systems last summer and initiated discussions regarding the possibility of implementing a food waste collection program for each school system. On June 8, 2010 Recycling Programs Manager Cody Marshall and I met with Orange County Public School's Director of Child Nutrition, Valarie Green at Orange High School. During this meeting we discussed all the cafeteria locations and Ms. Green supplied us with some information outlining the number of .meals provided each day at some of the schools. This information can help us understand the potential quantities of food waste that may be available for collection at each of the schools. Both kitchen preparation waste and food tray scraps from breakfast and lunch meals were being considered. Orange County Public Schools only have a few locations that still use a dish washer and most of the locations use disposable and supposedly biodegradable trays for each lunch. We also discussed how one of-the schools received a grant to provide fresh produce and found that, that school may be a good place to start with a pilot program. On August 4, 2010 Cody Marshall and I met with Chapel Hill - Carrboro City School's (CHCCS) Chartwells (the contract food management company) representative, Director of Dinning, Liz Cartano. The same information was discussed at this meeting. We discussed the type and amount of food that is prepared for the students and the current lunchroom practices. We found that CHCCS also mostly used the same disposable and biodegradable trays as Orange County Public Schools. Ms. Cartano has had past experience with food waste collection and composting and seemed to understand all the nuisances that go into a successful program. At the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, they started a program that captured all their prep waste in the kitchen in order to evaluate reducing the waste in the cafeterias. This program would capture the food prep (peels, seeds, etc.), measure it each day with hope to decrease the excess waste as the year progressed. The information they gathered from this exercise would be extremely helpful when implementing a food waste program. Although we expressed interest in obtaining this information we have yet to receive it. Following our meeting with the schools we also met with our current food waste collection contractor, Brooks Contracting, to discuss the possibility of adding schools to the existing route and to share. the information from our initial meeting with both schools.