For the second year in a row, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognized the city of San Diego’s efforts in waste reduction, city officials said Friday.
The EPA presented the city’s Environmental Services Department with the 2017 Food Recovery Challenge Award for its leadership with a food waste diversion program.
Food waste is the single largest category of San Diego’s garbage, comprising about 15 percent of waste that is sent to landfills each year. It’s been a key area of focus in the city’s goals to divert 75 percent of solid waste from heading into the Miramar Landfill by 2020, city officials said. The city plans to increase that amount to 90 percent by 2035, and achieve “zero waste” by 2040.
“The city has been composting food scraps at the Miramar Greenery since the 1990s,” said Environmental Services Department Director Mario X. Sierra. “Kudos to the ESD’s Waste Reduction Division for going over and above the call of duty to create and implement food waste diversion programs that set new standards for others to follow. This recognition is directly related to them and their efforts.”
The city’s commercial food waste diversion program started as a pilot program with grocery stores and discards from the central produce markets, and became permanent when the U.S. Navy began recovering and contributing sterilized food waste from ships returning to port. San Diego’s food scraps composting program was a pilot program until 2009, when the Miramar Greenery expanded to 75 acres, and food waste became part of its official feedstock.
There are currently 75 active commercial participants in the commercial food waste diversion program.
—City News Service
