University Students & Staff Participate in EPA Food Recovery Challenge : Arizona University’s Compost Cats Recognised by EPA for Food Waste Efforts
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has presented the University of Arizona with an award for “outstanding efforts” in food waste recycling and recovery. T
Taking part in the EPA Food Recovery Challenge, students, food service staff and university leaders, along with the Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier Co-operative Farm and the City of Tucson worked together to increase food recovery by 1232% from 2013 to 2014.
According to the EPA last year the partnership diverted 3.4 million pounds (1540 metric tonnes) of food waste, landscape debris, and manure from the landfill.
The Associated Students of the University of Arizona ‘Compost Cats’ started with a student proposal to do something better with food scraps from the student union than send them to the landfill.
In five years that has grown into a tri-institutional partnership program that takes in material from across Tucson, southern Arizona, and beyond. The food scraps are transformed into a composted to produce a soil amendment that enriches local food-growing soils to help conserve water and grow more food.
Over the past five years, approximately 10.4 million pounds (4720 metric tonnes) of material have been composted.
Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest said that the zero waste partnership is a result of student, university, tribal and city leaders working together to expand composting.
Chet Phillips, sustainability coordinator for the Associated Students of the University of Arizona and Compost Cats co-founder and program coordinator explained that food waste is an especially serious problem in Southern Arizona due to the 2 million tons of produce entering the U.S. through the port at Nogales each year.
The Challenge
In 2014, nearly 800 governments, businesses and organizations participated in EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge, including educational institutions, grocers, sports and entertainment venues and restaurants.
The agency explained that these entities diverted wasted food from entering landfills or incinerators through a variety of innovative actions, including creative re-use of trimmings by university dining staff; donating excess, wholesome food; composting in urban settings; and using wasted food to produce electricity.
According to the EPA Food Recovery Challenge participants and endorsers have so far diverted over 606,000 tons of wasted food, including over 88,500 tons donated to feed people, from landfills.
For more information on the Food Recovery Challenge click HERE
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