By now most people have heard of the farm-to-table movement, but not everyone has heard of the table to farm trend. Commercial compost and restaurant compost is becoming more popular as people and businesses are working to do their part to make sure that they recycle as much as possible. Restaurants are saving "pre-consumer" scraps, like vegetable and fruit trimmings, for commercial composting service companies that haul them away to small composting stations rather than to the landfill.
There are many cities that have joined the restaurant compost movement: Seattle, San Francisco, Lafayette, and New Orleans. Stephanie Bruno wrote an article about commercial compost in which she quotes Joseph Brock, a New Orleans native who founded and runs the NOLA Green Roots movement, "We wanted to create a model that could be replicated at any urban farm or community garden." The size of an urban farm or community garden is typically one or two lots in size at maximum, so the goal is to fit a composting station at each garden. But to do this model on a citywide scale is another thing. Brock works with local restaurants; each signs a contract to have their scraps picked up three times a week. He "educates kitchen workers about the kinds of materials that should go into the cans he provides, and he leaves a printed guide that can be posted on the kitchen wall to answer any questions." His non-profit commercial composting group transports the scraps to its community gardens. The scraps are combined with other materials that help to ensure the organic breakdown of the ingredients. "The whole process can take weeks," Brock said, "but the end product makes it worth it."
There are many restaurants and businesses that are working at replicating this composting model. Alyssa Denny of Rise Up Compost is goes to local restaurants and collects pre-consumer scraps so that she can turn them into marketable compost. Denny hasn't charged for the service yet because she says that most restaurants have not yet been educated on the practice of composting.
"We sell the compost that we make at the Holly grove Market and Farm, but the proceeds don't come close to covering the cost of what we do," Denny said. "We do it because we believe in it, but I even had one restaurant tell me, 'You should be paying me!' Some restaurants don't seem to get that composting the scraps reduces their waste disposal costs."
Brock and Denny both have concerns about restaurants feeling that composting will mean creating foul smells and attracting rodents. Deny's reply is that "[She] explain[s] that the lids on our bins snap shut, and that reduces odors and the possibility of attracting rodents. It's hard to figure out why some restaurants think that a compost bin would be a problem but feel fine about scraps and other waste stewing in a Dumpster."
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