This Job Should Be Harder... And Easier (Are restaurants failing the world?)
I am going to go ahead and say it. We should be ashamed of ourselves. When we took on the mission of composting we though it would be harder to find mass to throw into the pile. We also thought it would be easier to get people to give it up.
When we think about the sheer amount of compostable material we throw away, it is hard to believe that there are not compost operations all over the place. We throw away about half of the food we produce in this country. We are throwing away BILLIONS of pounds of food each day. The majority of it is going to landfill.
When I talk to people about it, there are a lot of people out there who would like to help. They want to do more but the problem is...What exactly?
Let's be honest.
We talked to several restaurants about gathering their organic mass and here were some of their concerns.
Legality...
Many were concerned about whether or not it was even legal for them to give away their kitchen scraps etc. Long story short, no it is not illegal for it to be given away.
Efficiency...
One of the primary and loudest complaints that I heard was that it would be difficult to get staff on .board with it first of all. In most of the kitchens we saw, all the garbage went into one receptacle . Chefs and kitchen managers said that it would be too difficult for cooks and prep cooks to separate all of that mass and still be efficient.
I have to call BS on this one. I have worked in and around kitchens since I was 16 years old and it has never been a problem. Mise en place changes based on what is needed and when. Conversely, it often makes the bags lighter and easier to deal with at the end of the day when they are taking the trash out and I have never heard anyone in back of the house complain about lighter bags.
So what are the other concerns? Anything? anyone?
What it boils down to is that we are looking for something that people are throwing out so that we can put it to use, American restaurants are the single biggest wasters of food on the planet. The vast majority of what we waste is going into rapidly filling landfills. So why not give it to us so that we can put it in a pile, flip it from time to time, and use it to grow more food?
No seriously, I am asking.
When we think about the sheer amount of compostable material we throw away, it is hard to believe that there are not compost operations all over the place. We throw away about half of the food we produce in this country. We are throwing away BILLIONS of pounds of food each day. The majority of it is going to landfill.When I talk to people about it, there are a lot of people out there who would like to help. They want to do more but the problem is...What exactly?
Let's be honest.
We talked to several restaurants about gathering their organic mass and here were some of their concerns.
Legality...
Many were concerned about whether or not it was even legal for them to give away their kitchen scraps etc. Long story short, no it is not illegal for it to be given away.
Efficiency...
One of the primary and loudest complaints that I heard was that it would be difficult to get staff on .board with it first of all. In most of the kitchens we saw, all the garbage went into one receptacle . Chefs and kitchen managers said that it would be too difficult for cooks and prep cooks to separate all of that mass and still be efficient.
I have to call BS on this one. I have worked in and around kitchens since I was 16 years old and it has never been a problem. Mise en place changes based on what is needed and when. Conversely, it often makes the bags lighter and easier to deal with at the end of the day when they are taking the trash out and I have never heard anyone in back of the house complain about lighter bags.
So what are the other concerns? Anything? anyone?
What it boils down to is that we are looking for something that people are throwing out so that we can put it to use, American restaurants are the single biggest wasters of food on the planet. The vast majority of what we waste is going into rapidly filling landfills. So why not give it to us so that we can put it in a pile, flip it from time to time, and use it to grow more food?
No seriously, I am asking.
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