Food waste projects improve climate and circularity

Make Food Not Waste (MFNW), a NextCycle Michigan Partner, is one of the organizations that receives donated food from Metro Food Rescue. They use the food at their Upcycling Kitchens—located at a Presbyterian church and a Salvation Army center that provides services for those suffering from addiction—to create delicious, nutritious, and complete meals for the community.

Danielle Todd, executive director of MFNW said, “Metro Food Rescue is one of our favorite partners and one that we recommend all of the time to potential food donors. We know we can count on them to respond right away and to make the rescue work not only for food donors but also for people like us who rely on regular food donations to serve the community.”

Food waste composting in cities and townships

Ferndale (Oakland County)

The City of Ferndale, in Oakland County, managed a popular pilot food-waste drop-off composting program serving both residential and commercial customers with support from the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator program. With NextCycle’s mentors and consultants, they estimated food waste production and recovery potential, analyzed growth options, researched composting technologies, projected costs, identified grantors, and honed their pitch for further funding.

Building on the success of the pilot, they joined the a second NextCycle Michigan cohort to get help in developing a composting system within the city to process the collected organics.

Claire Dion, former Zero Waste Program Coordinator at the City of Ferndale said of the benefits of the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator, “Having our pitch deck and having completed all of the data collection we were able to do, it really is going to set us up for success in applying for grant opportunities.” 

Beaver Island – Saint James & Peaine Townships (Charlevoix County)

Saint James and Peaine townships located in Charlevoix County—which, together, encompass Lake Michigan’s Beaver Island—are also worked with NextCycle Michigan to create a composting system for their residents, visitors, and businesses. Beaver Island is the most remote inhabited island in the Great Lakes. It has a year-round population of roughly 600 residents and a summer peak of a few thousand people. There is no regular curbside collection of garbage or recyclables; island residents and businesses must drop it all off at a transfer station and recycling center (TSRC) jointly run by the two townships.

Their location 40 miles from the mainland’s barge dock makes managing materials expensive for the islanders. The island’s property owners pay for waste and recycling services in three ways:

• Fees charged when they drop off waste or bulky items at the TSRC,
• Townships property taxes allocated to support and run the TSRC, and
• Charlevoix County’s recycling millage.

All the island’s recyclable materials and garbage are shipped by barge to the mainland, then a contracted waste hauler moves the waste to a landfill and processes and markets the recyclables. The TSRC pays for the shipping and management of the trash while the county recycling millage pays for the recyclables.

In two preliminary rounds of technical support -- one under an EGLE MICROS grant and another under a federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) Build-to-Scale grant sponsored by NextCycle Michigan and facilitated by the Centrepolis Accelerator at Lawrence Technological University—existing waste and recycling practices were analyzed and opportunities identified for improvements. They found that food-waste composting offered a win-win-win opportunity to

• Save money by decreasing the amount of waste hauled off-island,
• Reduce the climate impact of managing their organic waste, and
• Improve the island’s sandy soil while reducing the amount of compost shipped to the island.

A NextCycle Michigan team from the island then took part in the another Accelerator cohort, working with their NextCycle Michigan coaches and subject matter experts to determine the best composting system for their unique island. They decided on a home-composting model with an estimated implementation cost of $56,000. Municipal food-waste drop-off alternatives they considered came with equipment, facilities, and site costs between $147,100 and $347,100 and annual operating expenses of $40,000 a year or more. Questions about the availability of workers to run and maintain such a composting site on a part-time basis and markets for the finished compost also weighed against these options.

The islanders’ home composting plan puts education out front, beginning in the summer of 2024, followed by implementation of a pilot program with 50 households in Summer/Fall 2024. The 50 pilot households would include 20 renters and 30 owner-occupied units. Each pilot household would receive a 0.75-gallon caddy for collecting compostables in the kitchen, a 65-gallon composting bin for outdoors, and further education. After evaluating the opportunities and challenges identified through the pilot, a full roll out to the remaining 218 occupied households is anticipated in Winter/Spring 2025. The team calculated the potential diversion from disposal of 110 tons a year.

Collaboration for compost benefits

Detroiter Renee V. Wallace, a longtime process and change consultant serving a variety of businesses and nonprofits, has been following a calling to grow food-scraps composting systems for the benefit of the city for over 15 years. In 2021 she received the prestigious H. Clark Gregory Award from the U.S. Composting Council for outstanding service to the composting industry through grassroots efforts.

Wallace brought together multiple partners to develop a sustainable, equitable system to compost food waste from Wayne State University (WSU) and improve composting at the Georgia Street Community Garden (GSCC). This initiative was assisted by the NextCycle Michigan Accelerator. Renee, along with Mark Covington, president and co-director of GSCC, and the WSU Office of Campus Sustainability (OCS) worked together to get the system up and running.

“We built a program in such a way that it was about integrating two communities, a city, and a campus community,” said Wallace.

• Students taking part in the OCS’s Green Warriors program educated WSU students and staff about composting and collecting the compostables from dining halls and other participating campus locations.
• Leaders at WSU’s Dining Services Department developed efficient systems to collect pre-consumer food scraps for composting.
• The WSU Grounds Services department hauls leaves to GSCC to be blended with the food scraps.
• Covington and his GSCC team manage the composting process.
• Both GSCC and Wayne State use the finished compost.

Through her consulting service, Doer’s Edge, Wallace also supports NextCycle Michigan’s team recruitment and programming.

Autonomous food waste collection