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Zero Waste Forum for Food Businesses Draws a Crowd for Detailed, Forward-Thinking Discussion

9/19/2019

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Whether it's a state law requiring food-serving businesses to compost, the ever-growing list of municipalities banning the use of plastics as to-go food containers – or the overwhelming desire to do everything we can to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis – food business owners and managers are increasingly interested in best practices on packaging and food waste disposal.
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A Zero Waste Forum for food businesses at the Mill Valley Community Center this week covered a ton of ground on the subject, from continued marketplace confusion about what is/isn’t compostable and recyclable to some small but effective steps businesses can take to make a difference.

The event, organized by the Mill Valley Chamber, with support from Upstream's Miriam Gordon, Sustainable Mill Valley, City of Mill Valley and Ambatalia's Molly de Vries, centered on a panel featuring Mill Valley Refuse Service Managing Partner Jim Iavarone, Waste Management of Northern California (Redwood Landfill operator) Director of Communications Karen Stern, City of Mill Valley Senior Planner & Sustainability Coordinator Danielle Staude, ReThink Disposable's Grace Lee and Gordon, who moderated the discussion.

Any doubt about the level of interest on the subject was squashed at the outset, as the event drew representatives form a wide swath of the Mill Valley food business community, including the The Redwoods, Real Restaurants (Bungalow 44, Buckeye Roadhouse & Playa), Mill Valley Lumber Yard (Watershed, Flour Craft Bakery and BOL), CineArts @ Sequoia, Sol Food, McDonald’s, Paseo: A California Bistro, Swettwater, Equator Coffees, the Mountain Home Inn & Pelican Inn, Piazza D’angelo, the Outdoor Art Club, Mill Valley Beerworks and Patti’s Gift Baskets. Kathy Carver, manager for food donor and recipient relations for ExtraFood, which takes excess fresh food from businesses and delivers it to nonprofits serving Marin’s most vulnerable children, adults, and families, also attended.

The Q&A-driven discussion veered from the need for staff and customer education about proper disposal of the myriad food business products to frequency of garbage/compost/recycling pickup.

“These issues require clarity, and one of the goals for today is to help you clear up confusion about what it means to be a sustainable food business,” Gordon said. “How can we maintain or even boost your bottom line and go even further than the basic requirements. We all care about the planet. But your priority is to have a profitable, sustainable business first, and second, doing the best you can in terms of the environment.”

Iavarone and Stern were most equipped to answer questions around exactly what products are recyclable and compostable, and they did so with a series of slides:

COMPOST

Iavarone and Stern showed slides that indicated what products can be composted, and Iavarone urged customers to keep it simple, if necessary, to avoid contamination. "Start with food waste and worry about food soiled paper down the line," he said. "You can’t go wrong if there’s nothing but food waste in your green can."

He also indicated that MVRS may have to Increase the frequency of its composting collection for restaurants. "We are hearing more and more that restaurants need weekend compost service, and that is something that we are going to have to seriously look at providing."

​As Stern described it, San Francisco waste operator Recology has long marketed itself as willing to accept, and compost, products such as plant-based plastics. But a recent San Francisco Examiner piece revealed that, “to avoid contamination, sorters at Recology’s composting facility pull out unmarked, plastic-looking items to avoid contamination. 

“We share Recology’s concerns about compostable plastics and other contaminants,” Stern said. “At our Marin County facility, we do not accept compostable plastics because it would violate our compost’s OMRI-listing (Organic Materials Review Institute) for organic farming application.”
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RECYCLING

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The global changes in recycling began in January 2018, when China, long the world's dumping ground for recycling, enacted its “National Sword” policy, banning the import of most plastics and other materials headed for its recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century.

To accommodate those changes, Mill Valley Refuse has shifted to dual-stream collection for residential customers to start, with paper put into one cart and all other recyclables into a separate cart. 
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Lee and Gordon emphasized that while making sure that compost and recyclables end up in the right place is vital, reuse is the ultimate goal. “With a reuse centric-strategy, there is always a cost savings to the business by not perpetually buying non-reusable food ware,” Lee said. 

One of the cost-effective ways to create funding for a potential reuse program, Gordon said, is to charge customers an additional fee – 25 cents for a cup of coffee in a non-compostable cup, for instance.

She mentioned Vessel Works, a “tech-enabled stainless steel reusable cup service” that could be worth exploring as a pilot project in Mill Valley.

Lee and Gordon mentioned that San Anselmo has paid for a brochure from Rethink Disposable, and that the City of Mill Valley could potentially do the same, as could possible video PSAs around how employees and customers should dispose of food service products.

At the conclusion of the event Gordon and several restaurant owners noted that while business owners and customers should all do as much as possible to address these issues, larger corporations, from the food delivery services like UberEats and DoorDash, to the manufacturers of to-go containers and product packaging, bear responsibility at a macro level to further address the climate crisis.

The MV Chamber is developing an info packet for its food business members, and we plan to host more zero waste forums in the coming months.

Questions? Email us at info@millvalley.org or call 415.388.9700.
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Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center
85 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, CA 94941
(415) 388-9700