UO E-Clips is a daily report prepared by the Office of Communications (http://comm.uoregon.edu) summarizing current news coverage of the University of Oregon.
Media mentions for March 2
Board revisits campus gun ban
Register-Guard: The Oregon University System plans to take a second stab today at banning concealed handguns and other potentially dangerous weapons from the state’s seven campuses. The proposed firearms policy was crafted to meet the Oregon Court of Appeals’ legal objections after the court in September struck down a previous ban. The vote comes just a day after Senate Democrats tried -- and failed -- to pass a measure that would have instituted an Oregon campus gun ban but also allow campuses to opt out of the ban if they chose. The Senate did, however, vote Thursday to make private the identities of applicants for concealed handgun licenses. The university system’s goal in placing the ban before the 12-member Higher Education Board today is to secure a safe learning environment free of the fear that a student at the next desk has a concealed gun, OUS spokeswoman Di Saunders said.
Local gasoline prices clear $4 per gallon, and not done rising
Register-Guard: The average price at gas pumps throughout Eugene and Springfield topped $4 a gallon on Thursday for the first time since the summer of 2008, said Marie Dodds, AAA’s Oregon spokeswoman. And prices are expected to continue to climb until they peak this spring, perhaps as early as April, she said. That would be earlier than usual -- prices generally crest around Memorial Day, Dodds said. “The only good news is if we peak early, prices hopefully will come down from the highs in time for the summer driving season,” Dodds said. Escalating fuel costs put a crimp on family budgets and force business owners and managers to try to cut expenses in other areas or pass their higher fuel costs on to customers. In the short term it makes a fragile economic recovery that much more fragile, University of Oregon economist Tim Duy said, “The immediate effect is a drag on economic activity.”
StoveTec – A not just for profit
Eugene Daily News: Tucked away in unincorporated Glenwood, Oregon, lies a small business called StoveTec that’s dedicated to two things. The first is selling, to the citizens of Lane County, super-efficient barbecue stoves, outdoor cookers, and emergency water pasteurizers. The other is to provide the same stoves to organizations looking to distribute them in bulk to impoverished people worldwide, as a form of humanitarian aid. ... “Charitable non-profits in general are looking for more creative ways to make revenue,” University of Oregon law professor Susan Gary, Ph.D, said. The business involved, meanwhile, typically benefits from an improved reputation, Gary said. “Sometimes people talk about the ‘halo’ effect of being a charitable business,” Gary said. “I think in StoveTec’s case, that’s what’s going on.” Renee Irvin, Ph.D., a University of Oregon associate professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy & Management, said that about 20 years ago, non-profits began forming private companies as a means of supplemental fundraising. The private companies which had a “natural tie” to their non-profit’s mission, like StoveTec, tended to flourish, while ones without such a tie-in tended to fail, Irvin said.
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Late mentions for March 1
University of Oregon ends guaranteed admissions, aims to make school more competitive, flexible
Oregonian News Network: Applicants to the University of Oregon (UO) this year are the first to experience a new admissions policy. Starting with the freshman class of 2012 applicants, the UO dropped its automatic admissions policy–one that guaranteed admission to students who met certain baseline criteria–in favor of an application “process” that takes a more well-rounded look at students, according to school officials. Under the old system, all a student had to do was earn a 3.4 grade point average (GPA) and pass a mix of preparatory classes in high school. If students didn’t meet these requirements, they could still gain admittance to the university; however, they also had to go through a review process that required some extra paperwork and an essay. Now all students are required to write an essay. According to the Office of Admissions website students may write on any topic but should include information that isn’t covered elsewhere their applications. Under the new policy, there is still a minimum GPA requirement of 3.0 (B average). Students who don’t meet this GPA can apply for alternative admission.
Composting for Foodservice
Foodservice Equipment and Supplies Magazine: The most successful composting programs in restaurants and foodservice operations seem to be ones where that culture of composting is really ingrained in the staff and management. The idea of composting not being glamorous is pervasive among foodservice operators in general, points out Dr. Robert Young, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon and cofounder of the University of Oregon Sustainable Cities Initiative. But that might be about to change. “When we started doing foodservice waste composting in New Jersey one of the first things people said was the people who work in back rooms of restaurants, like the dishwashers and prep cooks, are too stupid and too disinterested to care and they’re not going to separate the waste,” Young says. “There has always been this classist way of addressing restaurant workers. But what we found when we started working with restaurants was exactly the opposite. By giving those with relatively dull jobs something they could do that gave them real meaning, they became much more meticulous about proper sorting than management. It’s important to not underestimate the enthusiasm and intelligence and desire of the people who would be doing the separating, even on the very low rungs of the hierarchy. If you set up great systems, 99 percent of the time, they’re really excellent at it.”
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Media mentions for March 2
Board revisits campus gun ban
A new proposal aims to comply with an Oregon Court of Appeals ruling that struck down a previous ban
By Diane Dietz and Saul Hubbard -- The Register-GuardThe Oregon University System plans to take a second stab today at banning concealed handguns and other potentially dangerous weapons from the state’s seven campuses.
The proposed firearms policy was crafted to meet the Oregon Court of Appeals’ legal objections after the court in September struck down a previous ban.
The vote comes just a day after Senate Democrats tried -- and failed -- to pass a measure that would have instituted an Oregon campus gun ban but also allow campuses to opt out of the ban if they chose. The Senate did, however, vote Thursday to make private the identities of applicants for concealed handgun licenses.
The university system’s goal in placing the ban before the 12-member Higher Education Board today is to secure a safe learning environment free of the fear that a student at the next desk has a concealed gun, OUS spokeswoman Di Saunders said.
“If somebody leaned over and their jacket opened, and somebody saw a weapon, they’d be nervous or scared or concerned,” she said. “That’s not another worry that you need when you’re trying to get a degree.”
If the board votes yes today, the ban would take effect immediately.
Oregon universities had enforced an administrative gun ban for three decades until 2009, when a student with a handgun -- who held a concealed weapons permit -- was suspended for bringing his gun to campus.
The Canby-based Oregon Firearms Education Foundation challenged the ban and a three-judge Oregon Court of Appeals panel struck it down, saying that only the Legislature can regulate firearms because, earlier, Oregon lawmakers adopted a “pre-emptive” law that reserves that right.
The new policy that the higher education board will consider today requires most people who have a relationship with a university to agree to leave their handguns at home.
The fine print will apply to ticket buyers at sporting events, students signing up for dorm rooms, vendors doing business on campus, faculty and staff who draw a university paycheck, outside groups that lease university facilities and attendees at campus conferences.
The proposal is close to but not as global as the previous ban because it doesn’t apply to people who are not under a contract with the university, Saunders said.
“The old policy included facilities/buildings and adjacent grounds. This is more so the facilities themselves. There’s not as much coverage of adjacent grounds,” Saunders said.
The new ban should pass legal muster, she said, because of a 2009 Court of Appeals ruling denying a Medford teacher the right to bring a concealed weapon to school.
The court upheld the Medford School District’s employment policy prohibiting concealed weapons and, significantly, did not find that the policy ran afoul of the state’s pre-emptive rule.
“The court distinguished between an internal policy and an attempt to regulate firearms,” Saunders said.
But Kevin Starrett, executive director of the group that challenged the previous ban, said he can’t find justification in the court record for the proposed new ban.
“They lost the court case and now they’re saying, ‘We don’t care. We’re just going to do it again,’ ” he said. “We spent about $50,000 to get them to obey the law last time.”
Meanwhile, gun control advocates in the Legislature, led by Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, tried to give campuses explicit authority to ban guns with Senate Bill 1594, which was moribund earlier in the session but resurrected this week in the wake of shootings at a Cleveland area high school that left three students dead.
Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, hustled the bill to the Senate floor on Thursday for a vote.
Burdick urged passage, telling colleagues they should let “Oregon schools, instead of some outside (pro-gun) lobby group, decide what really does constitute a safe school.”
Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli of John Day said the bill smacked of “the politics of fear” that school shootings engender.
“We all feel helpless after these terrible incidents, and when we feel helpless, we become fearful,” he said.
He said the proposal would not prevent any school shootings, but rather would be a “gesture without meaning or substance.”
Two coastal Democrats -- Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose and Sen. Joanne Verger of Coos Bay -- joined 13 Republicans in defeating the bill on a 15-14 vote. One Republican senator, Bruce Starr of Hillsboro, was excused.
Forty-seven states either prohibit concealed weapons or allow campuses to decide whether or not to adopt bans, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ben Eckstein, the University of Oregon student body president, said he plans to testify today in favor of the OUS ban.
“A college campus is statistically one of the safest places on the planet. There’s a reason for that. We have a culture of peaceful, informed, engaged activism. A deadly weapon of any kind runs counter to that culture,” he said.
But Starrett said people who believe campuses are safe are naive. Students are more likely to be molested by teachers than hurt by somebody with a concealed handgun license, he said.
“College campuses are, like, baby, that’s open season,” he said. “There’s a bunch of, like, 19-year-old girls walking around in the dark. You’ve got to be stupid to think those places are somehow safer than anywhere else.”
BOARD VOTE
The Higher Education Board is scheduled to vote on the campus gun ban about 1 p.m. today in the Academic and Student Recreation Center at Portland State University in Portland
Webcast: www.ous.edu/state_board/meeting/webcast
Background documents: http://rgne.ws/AC54iQ
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Local gasoline prices clear $4 per gallon, and not done rising
By Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-GuardThe average price at gas pumps throughout Eugene and Springfield topped $4 a gallon on Thursday for the first time since the summer of 2008, said Marie Dodds, AAA’s Oregon spokeswoman.
And prices are expected to continue to climb until they peak this spring, perhaps as early as April, she said. That would be earlier than usual -- prices generally crest around Memorial Day, Dodds said.
“The only good news is if we peak early, prices hopefully will come down from the highs in time for the summer driving season,” Dodds said.
Escalating fuel costs put a crimp on family budgets and force business owners and managers to try to cut expenses in other areas or pass their higher fuel costs on to customers.
In the short term it makes a fragile economic recovery that much more fragile, University of Oregon economist Tim Duy said, “The immediate effect is a drag on economic activity.”
“When gasoline crosses that $4-a-gallon threshold people tend to take drastic measures on cutting back on fuel,” Dodds said. “Many of us have limited funds coming in, and when you spend more on gas that means you have less to spend on restaurants and movies and medication and doctor’s visits and everything else that you need.”
That pretty much describes the situation of Barbara Snyder, a disabled Springfield resident.
When gas prices are high, “I don’t get to do as many things with my kids or grandkids,” she said, as she waited in line to fuel up her van at the ARCO station in Springfield’s Gateway area.
AAA predicts that the national average for regular gasoline, which was $3.738 on Thursday, will top out somewhere between $3.75 and $4.25, Dodds said.
Oregon’s average, which is generally higher than the national average for a variety of reasons, could go as high as $4.35 or $4.40 a gallon, she said.
The record high for Oregon was $4.29 on July 3, 2008.
“I think we’ll get very close to that,” Dodds said.
On June 28, 2008, the Eugene-Springfield area’s average reached a high mark of $4.33, she said.
If prices manage to zoom past the 2008 record, the effect would be more than just psychological.
“There is research that indicates that there’s a more dramatic effect on household behavior if you move well past previous highs,” Duy, the UO economist said. “If you rapidly move beyond that number, I think that would cause more severe cutbacks in spending.”
If high fuel costs persist, however, consumers will make adjustments over time, Duy said.
“They’ll take public transportation,” he said. “We’ll see more carpooling. We’ll see people shifting to more fuel-efficient cars, perhaps.”
As fuel costs rise, leaders of businesses that rely on gasoline and diesel to make and ship products have to decide whether to eat the cost or pass it along.
Last week, Jeff Gunnarson, vice president of Sherman Bros. Heavy Trucking, said that when fuel prices rise as rapidly as they have recently, fuel surpasses labor as a trucking company’s No. 1 cost.
His company tries to recoup higher fuel prices through surcharges, Gunnarson said. But the fuel charges are set every Monday, and if prices rise during the week, the surcharge may not be enough to cover the additional fuel costs, he said. Sooner or later, the costs are passed along to customers.
“It trickles on down the line,” Gunnarson said. “That’s why everything is more expensive.”
Other company managers say they can’t immediately pass along their higher costs for fuel.
“We have to eat it and hope to be efficient in our deliveries,” said Jeff Hansen, president of Mid-Valley Glass & Millwork in Eugene.
The 65-employee company ships doors and windows to hotel, motel and retirement home projects around the country.
“Unfortunately we can only bid the freight amount of what it is today, and if we deliver that product three months from now we take the hit,” Hansen said. “The last couple of years it’s been substantial.”
“Labor is our biggest cost,” he said. “But freight can be 10 to 15 percent of the cost, and it adds up quickly.”
Jeff Althouse, co-founder of Oakshire Brewing, also said his business doesn’t immediately pass on higher fuel costs.
“What we’ll do is we’ll evaluate on an annual basis the various costs,” he said. “Some costs rise and some fall over the year, and sometimes they average out.”
The brewery went through that exercise in January, deciding not to raise its prices for 2012.
“We had some escalating costs a few years back on hops and that drove prices up, and when hops came back down it provided a little bit of room in the margins,” Althouse said. “So what you find is distributors aren’t as quick to react as you might think.”
Oakshire self-distributes in Eugene, Springfield, Corvallis, Cottage Grove and Creswell, and it uses other distributors to ship its beer through the Northwest, and most recently into Alaska, Eastern Washington and northern Idaho, Althouse said.
His advice on weathering the high gas prices?
“From my perspective you might as well choose a beer instead of driving,” he said. “There are few alternatives to the pleasures of drinking a pint.”
Gas prices are on the rise for a variety of reasons, economists and analysts said.
There are “good shocks,” including the uptick in economic activity creating greater demand for oil as a commodity, Duy said.
Then there are the “bad shocks,” such as disruptions in oil supply or expectations of disruptions in supply, related to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, escalating tension with Iran and growing violence in Syria, Dodds said.
Oil futures jumped to new highs after the close of markets Thursday after Middle Eastern news organizations reported that an explosion destroyed an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government denied those reports, and they could not be independently confirmed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It just shows how jittery the oil markets are right now, and anything that suggests a disruption in supply will send prices up,” Dodds said.
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StoveTec – A Not Just For Profit
Funding Non-Profits In a Down Economy
Nate Gartrell, EDNTucked away in unincorporated Glenwood, Oregon, lies a small business called StoveTec that’s dedicated to two things. The first is selling, to the citizens of Lane County, super-efficient barbecue stoves, outdoor cookers, and emergency water pasteurizers.
The other is to provide the same stoves to organizations looking to distribute them in bulk to impoverished people worldwide, as a form of humanitarian aid.
StoveTec, run by a man named Todd Albi who created it in 2008, is a not-just-for-profit company, which combines the philanthropy of humanitarian aid with the more hard-nosed aspects of running a business.
Here’s how it works: StoveTec is owned by Aprovecho Research Center, a regular non-profit based in Cottage Grove. Aprovecho heads a research and distribution center which developed the technology used in StoveTec’s rocket stoves, designed to heat faster and stay hot longer per unit of fuel. Aprovecho also distributes rocket stoves as part of their humanitarian aid work.
Meanwhile, StoveTec, with its own warehouse, sells its stoves just like any business, but uses its profits to help fund Aprovecho’s mission. Despite that connection, though, Albi is quick to point out that the two entities are run separately–Aprovecho does their thing, and Albi does his.
So far, Albi said, it has been a winning formula–StoveTec’s business has been steadily increasing, and local sales are playing a substantial part in that.
“We’ve made our rent here every month just on walk-in traffic,” Albi said. “[At first], we weren’t sure we could accomplish that, because most of our sales are on the internet, internationally.”
The high rate of international sales is no surprise to Albi, due to the acclaim the super-efficient “rocket” stoves have received. Designed by Dr. Larry Winiarski, the stoves reduce toxic emissions, maximize heat output, and require relatively little wood to operate.
“These stoves were designed for the 50 percent of the world that cooks on open fire every night, and has to boil every sip of water they drink,” Albi said. “But they’re fun to cook with, and they’re very efficient. This is green cooking.”
Since then, Aprovecho’s stoves won the Prince Charles International Ashden Energy Award (in 2009), and the group has worked with the United Nations. A picture of Prince Charles presenting the award to Aprovecho’s Executive Director Dean Still is on display inside StoveTec, and the stove’s reputation has helped business, Albi said.
The fact that StoveTec’s products can be used for emergency situations, for instance, has boosted local sales, even in the down economy, Albi said.
“As the economy has gone down, the sales of these things have been going up,” Albi said, meaning StoveTec could play a crucial role to Aprovecho’s funding, should economic turmoil ever affect the non-profit’s other means to acquire funds.
It’s a little-known fact that non-profits are allowed to own private companies as a means of supplemental fundraising, and it may seem ironic to some. But, according to legal and economic experts, not-just-for-profit companies can often strengthen, rather than dilute, the charitable aspect of their non-profit entity’s missions.
“Charitable non-profits in general are looking for more creative ways to make revenue,” University of Oregon law professor Susan Gary, Ph.D, said.
The business involved, meanwhile, typically benefits from an improved reputation, Gary said.
“Sometimes people talk about the ‘halo’ effect of being a charitable business,” Gary said. “I think in StoveTec’s case, that’s what’s going on.”
Renee Irvin, Ph.D., a University of Oregon associate professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy & Management, said that about 20 years ago, non-profits began forming private companies as a means of supplemental fundraising. The private companies which had a “natural tie” to their non-profit’s mission, like StoveTec, tended to flourish, while ones without such a tie-in tended to fail, Irvin said.
According to studies taken by the National Center for Charitable Statistics, non-profit business primarily acquired revenue through fees for the services they provide, and through private contributions. Those methods alone made up more than half of all non-profit revenue in 2005 and 2008.
That doesn’t mean that some have expressed concern, or even fear, over non-profits owning private companies to help fundraise. But the past 20 years have shown such concerns aren’t valid, Irvin said.
“If you look at traditional academics talk about it, a lot of them were like, ‘Oh my goodness! It’s gonna lead to mission drift, they’re going to lose their way. They’re going to turn into greedy capitalists and we’re all the worse for it,’” Irvin said. “And I’m looking at the numbers and saying, ‘…No, it hasn’t taken over.’ Non-profits haven’t changed their mission, and they aren’t turning evil.”
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Late mentions for March 1
Composting for Foodservice
Written by Amelia Levin, Contributing Editor Foodservice Equipment and Supplies MagazinePlanning, developing and implementing composting programs continues to get easier for foodservice operators because more operators are electing to take these environmentally friendly steps. As role models for their peers, they help both commercial and noncommercial operators follow in that path.
The most successful composting programs in restaurants and foodservice operations seem to be ones where that culture of composting is really ingrained in the staff and management.
The idea of composting not being glamorous is pervasive among foodservice operators in general, points out Dr. Robert Young, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon and cofounder of the University of Oregon Sustainable Cities Initiative
“When we started doing foodservice waste composting in New Jersey one of the first things people said was the people who work in back rooms of restaurants, like the dishwashers and prep cooks, are too stupid and too disinterested to care and they’re not going to separate the waste,” Young says. “There has always been this classist way of addressing restaurant workers. But what we found when we started working with restaurants was exactly the opposite. By giving those with relatively dull jobs something they could do that gave them real meaning, they became much more meticulous about proper sorting than management. It’s important to not underestimate the enthusiasm and intelligence and desire of the people who would be doing the separating, even on the very low rungs of the hierarchy. If you set up great systems, 99 percent of the time, they’re really excellent at it.”
Elizabeth Meltz, director of food safety and sustainability for Batali/Bastianich Hospitality Group, knows all about this. “I had a chef tell me “I can barely get the staff to not throw away the silverware, how am I going to get them to separate the organic matter?” But there’s something very intuitive about this challenge,” she says.
Meltz should know because her experience includes serving as chef de partie and kitchen manager at Del Posto in New York City. “Basically if you can eat it, it goes in the compost bin, and because Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s restaurants try to use as little disposable products as possible, it makes it easier to figure out what to do with paper and compostable disposable products.
“All of the chefs thought composting would be much more complicated than it turns out to be,” Meltz adds. “We just set up these totes next to where we’re prepping vegetables and when they’re done they take a little individual container they’ve had next to them to hold the scraps and walk it over to the tote when they’re done.” The post-consumer waste bin sits next to the dishwasher and staff fill it when cleaning the plates.
The restaurant group then works with off-site composting facilities to pick up the bins on a regular basis. It’s all about setting up the kitchen for composting success, not failure, including analyzing how much movement and effort composting correctly requires, Meltz says.
The foodservice staff at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., does not view composting as a chore, either. As one of about seven work schools in the state, the college requires students to complete 15 hours of on-campus work each semester. And, with a list of more “work crews” from which to choose, one of the most popular activities is, believe it or not, the composting/recycling crew, according to Brian O’Loughlin, general manager for Sodexo, which runs the college’s dining program.
“We were very into sustainability on campus well before it was ever popular, and have been recycling, composting and buying local foods for a long time,” O’Loughlin says. Still, the campus works regularly to reinforce enthusiasm for its composting program.
Being able to drive around on golf carts to pick up the trash helps for one, O’Loughlin says. So does allowing the students complete creative reign with the composting shed that is used to shelter the massive green drums the campus uses to conduct some of its onsite composting. “The students built this hut by hand made with straw and mud, and then found two windows from elsewhere on campus and installed those,” O’Loughlin says. “They also took green and blue and different colored bottles and put those in the walls and created shelves and even built a green roof using the expertise of an engineer on campus.”
Each day, students collect the food waste from the composting bins at different points in the dining halls and transfer the waste to the drums, which use heat, wood chips (carbon) and constant rotation to digest the waste and create the start of a soil amendment that falls out the back end. From there, the students sift out any undigested wood chips, tossing them back into the front of the bins and setting the finished compost out to age under tarps for another week or so. The resulting product is used for the college’s on-site gardens and hoop house to grow more food for the campus, thereby “closing the loop,” O’Loughlin says.
On-Site Vs. Off-Site
Choosing to compost on-site or selecting off-site facilities is an important part of the equation to make a composting program affordable, successful and meaningful in a sustainable way, both O’Loughlin and Meltz say. Warren Wilson College chose the on-site method because the space was available, it could be an educational lesson for the students and because the labor and financial resources were available.
At the same time, even if financial resources don’t seem like they would be available, committing to composting means finding a way to make this happen. “You have to commit some resources to composting, or divert others that are already there,” O’Loughlin says.
With Warren Wilson’s green drums costing upwards of $20,000 each, the program represents a giant financial commitment for the college. New composting equipment on the market can also be pricey, but worth it for larger operators with the space and lack of area composting facilities.
Still, when choosing a composting facility, if there is much of a choice to be made, think wisely. “One thing we looked at was how far away the composting facility is located,” Meltz says. The extra trucking required to pick up the composting can be just as damaging on the environment in terms of carbon footprint and global warming impact, and this is another reason Warren Wilson decided to avoid the trucks and compost on campus.
“We looked into a facility in Delaware that was 300 miles away and the fuel efficiency was actually better than a rocky road a truck would take to get to a closer facility in Connecticut,” says Meltz. “You have to look at all the angles and decide what’s important to you.”
In Las Vegas where there’s quite a bit more space than other markets, like New York City, on-site dehydrator equipment appeared to be a great fit to help B&B Restorante reduce some of the waste hauled away. Of course, that was on paper. In practice, however, this was not such a great fit. “With the flat fees for waste hauling regardless of load, there was no incentive to take those 800 pounds of trash and make it two pounds because we still have to pay the same amount,” Meltz says. “For a $15,000 machine, there would be little return on investment there.”
Reducing From the Start
Even before selecting a composting facility or on-site program, reducing waste in the first place is a priority for the Batali/Bastianich Hospitality Group. Culinary staff use scraps to make stocks for soups and sauces. Staff also creatively use other odds and ends in appetizers and other small bites.
“At Carnevino Italian Steakhouse in Las Vegas we age our own beef and the steak gets this crusty texture,” Meltz says. “We make pastrami and corned beef out of it, and we try to use as much as we can for family meals.”
Meltz even found a local gourmet pet food company to use some of the odds and ends. “They pick it up for free. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, and we’re eventually looking to co-brand with them.”
The restaurant group also sends off its grease to a small maker of glycerin soap in the area.
Affairs to Remember, a well-known Atlanta-based catering company, announced that its Legacy Green program diverted 200 tons from landfills since its inception in 2008, when the city lost a major convention contract because there was no citywide focus on green initiatives, says Travis Taylor, a spokesperson for the caterer. The company measured how much per month it sent to landfills compared to the company’s composting program to come up with that figure.
“For us, composting completes the circle. Knowing that all of our organic materials will eventually become fertile soil fits well with our idea of giving back to our community and to our environment,” adds Patrick Cuccaro, general manager for Affairs to Remember and chair of the Georgia Restaurant Association. The company also uses that soil to fertilize its chef’s garden to further close the loop.
The catering company also sends its grease off for conversion to diesel fuel and makes regular donations to the Atlanta community food bank. Serving more in bulk and cutting down on disposables at events has also helped Affairs to Remember cut down on its waste in general, Taylor says.
Being a catering company, though, comes with unique composting challenges; namely, training a constantly rotating and temporary staff. Again, setting up a kitchen or event for success is the key: clear labeling and using colored composting bins with clear signage about what can go in and what can’t helps with this, Taylor says. The company also switched to completely compostable disposables for its box lunch program. And it has revamped its training program to emphasize composting and the Legacy Green program and sustainability in general.
In Meltz’s view, composting is one of the easier green things to do. And it should be that way. “More than 70 percent of a restaurant’s waste stream comes from food,” she says. “We owe it to the environment to dispose of it properly.”
Ways to Go
Despite these successful examples, implementing composting programs could be easier for foodservice operators from all segments. The United States is still a ways away from nationwide composting reform and facility growth, and this starts at the public policy level, according to Young.
Part of the slow growth of composting nationwide, Young says, is a lack of capacity. “But one of the main reasons for that lack of capacity comes from a lack of interest or desire in composting,” he says.
“Good things happen when you get a good enough coalition together, just look at the National Wildlife Federation or bird preserves,” Young says. “We need the same thing in foodservice; not just a few composters, but also foodservice operators, haulers, and large-scale generators to get together as a group and get in touch with their state governments. This is a huge piece of our supply chain and a big part of our environmental sustainability.”