Economic and Sustainable Development: Compost Up, Downtown!

The Challenge

What if you could help reduce food waste while eating at your favorite restaurants in Bloomington?

Restaurants are one of the largest sources of commercial food waste in Bloomington. Restaurant and grocery stores alone account for 93 percent of food waste from non-residential sources in Monroe County (Organic Waste Recovery Analysis, 2018); providing an opportunity for waste diversion. The Bloomington Climate Action Plan recommends strategies for Bloomington to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to local climate impacts. The Climate Action Plan identifies many priorities, including Strategy WM1-A (https://bton.in/ZC2Y5) to increase the community’s organic material diversion by 40%. 

To help tackle this challenge, the City of Bloomington’s Department of Economic and Sustainable Development partnered with EarthKeepers, a Bloomington based composting company.

The Idea

The goal of the Compost Up, Downtown program is to incentivize businesses in downtown Bloomington to reduce food waste generation and increase diversion from landfills. 

The Compost Up Downtown program is a partnership between the City of Bloomington Economic and Sustainable Development Department and Earthkeepers, a commercial composting company. This program offers a three-month composting trial period with EarthKeepers for 16 eligible restaurants and retail food establishments between April 2022 and May 2023 to reduce technical and financial barriers to integrating composting practices in restaurant operations. 

At the end of the three-month trial period, program participants receive customized, discounted quotes for continuing service through EarthKeepers. Retail food establishments must be located in the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District (Downtown Bloomington) to be eligible for this program. Businesses must also hold a valid Monroe County Health Department permanent retail food establishment license. Mobile food vendors are not eligible for this program at this point in time.

Want to see which restaurants are currently participating in Compost Up, Downtown? Click here to visit the Earthkeepers website for more information (https://www.earthkeeperscompost.com/cityeateryprogram)

The Cost

Compost Up Downtown is funded through Recover Forward initiative to help Bloomington recover from the pandemic and advance racial, economic, and climate justice. Through this program, participating food-service businesses receive a waste audit, assistance in setting up compost collections, and three months of compost collection from EarthKeepers. The program incentive is provided free of charge to restaurants and is valued at $5,000 per restaurant. 

The Benefit 

Benefits for participating restaurants include: 

• A subsidized waste audit, free to each restaurant
• Reduced food waste sent to landfills
• Potential cost savings in non-organic waste disposal
• Increased organic waste recovery rate 
• Reduced cost, time, and labor to start  new composting practices

Participating restaurant and retail food establishments in the program receive the following incentives during the three-month trial:  

• Weekly collection of 32-gallon compost carts. Carts are collected two or three times per week, depending on assessed needs
• 5-gallon buckets and 1.5-gallon pails, with lids, for internal use
• Waste audit, including presentation and Q&A for owners and staff, a staff training session, discussions with staff to identify common composting contaminants, and custom signage and cart placement
• Window decals for participants
• Personalized web-profile on the EarthKeepers website
• Mixed-media promotions of participating restaurants as EarthKeepers partners .

“EarthKeepers is delighted to partner with the City of Bloomington on the Compost Up Downtown initiative. Many Bloomingtonians already understand that composting food-waste reduces GHG emissions from landfills and hence it is good for the environment. However, composting is also good for our local economy: restaurants can save money by tracking how much food waste they generate and then adjusting their procurement practices to right-size their inventories. Moreover, having a local source of high quality compost supports local farmers who can grow healthy food at a lower cost than shipping-in fertilizers. This in turn benefits the community who has access to locally grown food...and so the cycle is completed: from farm to table then from table to farm, where compost is made and cycle begins again!” - Andrea Conway, CEO

Through this composting program, the City of Bloomington’s Economic and Sustainable Development Department and EarthKeepers aim to decrease the amount of compostable waste from going to the landfill, turning food waste into compost that can be utilized for urban and rural food production, landscaping, erosion control, and stormwater management. 

Check out which of your favorite restaurants are participating here: https://www.earthkeeperscompost.com/cityeateryprogram and learn more about the program at: bloomington.in.gov/sustainability/compost

Metadata

City Department(s): Economic and Sustainable Development

City Point of Contact: Lauren Clemens

Partner(s): EarthKeepers Compost

Partner(s) Point(s) of Contact: Andrea and Ryan Conway 

Type of Innovation: Brand New Service

Date Implemented: April 2022