Last week, the Metro Council took one giant step for slop.
On Oct. 28, the regional government decided to keep
the entire $60 million windfall that resulted from renegotiating
landfill fees with Waste Management Inc. The decision
will keep a key component of disposal costs--the tipping
fee charged to haulers--unchanged.
That's good news for recycling advocates, who say a
high tipping fee will help them open the final frontier
of recycling--food-related organic waste.
Organics are no small issue. In the Metro region, city
officials reckon that food-related castoffs constitute
20 percent of the residential and commercial waste stream--that's
about 240,000 tons per year of biodegradable waste.
Except for a small pilot operation run by Waste Management
and a few pig farmers who take brewery wastes, most
local organic waste goes straight to expensive landfills--in
the process contaminating lots of dry waste that could
otherwise be recycled.
Vince Gilbert thinks that's a tragedy. "To me, the
future looks very bright," he says. "The future is in
organic waste."
But don't mention the word "slop" to Gilbert, who,
along with his father, Ralph, runs East County Recycling.
To him, the proper term is "organic pre-consumer waste."
When Gilbert closes his eyes, he envisions mountains
of uneaten apples, tubs of bruised potatoes, and truckloads
of coffee grounds all winging their way to the North
Plains Humus Facility he and his father plan to open
next January.
They won't be the first to try large-scale reclamation
of organic waste in the area. But they hope to be the
first to succeed. In 1991, Reidel Environmental Technologies
opened a full-scale composting plant on Columbia Boulevard.
The plant, run in cooperation with Metro, closed less
than a year later, the victim of complaints about smell.
The Gilberts, who have operated a small humus facility
in Hood River for eight years, say smell won't be a
problem at their Washington County operation. By carefully
mixing and monitoring their organic waste, the Gilberts
keep their mess alive and odorless. "Humus does not
smell," says Vince Gilbert.
The Gilberts plan to market their end product as a
soil supplement and are convinced their operation will
be commercially viable.
Ken Gimpel, a Waste Management official who has been
involved with his company's organic recycling effort,
is less starry-eyed about slop's prospects. "There are
lots of logistical hurdles," he says. Unlike residences,
grocery stores and restaurants are scattered, making
pickup expensive, Gimpel says. Additionally, recyclers
will have to design new containers and trucks and contend
with spoilage both before and after pickup. "The problems
can be overcome," he says, "but at what cost?"
Currently, Metro is bankrolling a year-old project
in which Safeway trucks carry cardboard boxes full of
unsold fruit and vegetables from about 30 Portland-area
stores to a specially modified Waste Management dumpster
at Safeway's Clackamas distribution center.
From there the waste is taken to Metro's central transfer
station, compressed into 25-ton bricks and trucked to
the Arlington landfill, where it is chopped up and spread
on the ground. The compost produced is either used to
beautify the landfill or given away. Metro officials
concede getting from a pilot project to large-scale
organics-recycling presents daunting challenges. "There's
no infrastructure, no facilities and building them will
be expensive and dirty," says waste planner Doug Anderson.
Not to mention, he adds, the sticky issue of siting
recycling operations. Everybody wants recycling, but
nobody wants a recycling facility in his back yard.
If you ask Vince Gilbert, though, he'll tell you that
Waste Management and Metro just don't have the right
formula.
He expects his new, 50-acre facility to handle 30,000
tons of organic waste next year. Gilbert says his team
has perfected a proprietary technology for doing what
Mother Nature does--only faster. The way Gilbert envisions
organic recycling working is fairly simple. Trucks will
pick up pre-consumer waste from grocery stores, food
processors and restaurants--before they spoil. "If it
smells, we won't take it," Gilbert says.
Dairy products, meat and plate scrapings don't work,
he says. At the humus plant, the organics (which don't
have to be technically organic) will be processed, mixed
with yard debris, and then spread in wind-rows to dry--hence
the need for 50 acres.
After five to eight weeks, depending on the time of
year, the waste becomes what Gilbert says will be a
concentrated soil amender, restoring all depleted nutrients
and minerals and also acting as herbicide and pesticide.
"Regular compost, you spread 2 to 4 inches thick," he
says. "Our product, you just sprinkle, like pepper on
an egg."
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 3,
1999
