Tag: food waste

Tossing Food Scraps to the Worms

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:

Transcript

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:


I’m driving through the rain to meet a woman who’s doing something I’ve
heard about for years but have never actually seen. And she’s doing it in her basement. She’s taking her
family’s food scraps and feeding them to worms downstairs. Brenda
Lotito’s home is white and brown, and sits on a little hill in a suburban
neighborhood. Brenda is expecting me and greets me at the door. Behind
her, there’s a little commotion. That’s her son John and the family dog,
Charlie.


I have a seat at the kitchen table. I find out it was John who first
took an interest in worms. He likes the red, slimy night crawlers:


“What sparked my interest in the worms is how they feel when you touch
them and how you can’t hold them very well because they keep slipping
out of your hands.”


With a little research at their local library, Brenda and John found
worms work as a natural garbage disposal. So for the past five years,
instead of putting the garbage out, they’ve been feeding the worms.
They turn the food scraps into compost.


We all head down to the basement, including Charlie, the dog. That’s
where Brenda keeps the family’s worm box.


The Lotitos have a typical basement. Washer, dryer, sports equipment…
and a box of worms. It’s wood. It’s about 2 feet wide by 4 feet long.
Brenda tells me they can be different sizes depending on what you need.
This one is more than large enough for Brenda, John, her husband, and
Charlie, the dog. Brenda says she can put just about all her food waste
into the box:


“I don’t put meat or anything like that in there but we put all our
vegetables. Ya know, I don’t have to cut anything up. I just simply
throw the corn cobs in there throw the husks in there. And they eat
it.”


I open the lid and peer in. The first thing I notice is what I don’t
notice. There’s no offensive odor. The only smell I do detect is that
of fresh earth. I move the contents of the box around. There’s some
shredded newspapers, some corn cobs in the process of becoming worm
food, coffee grounds, and other food waste.


After a little poking around, I find the worms: dozens of red,
well-fed looking worms. They’re fat.


Brenda tells me she has been making worm boxes for years and she thinks
others can benefit from her experience. She’s selling worm composting
kits for a small price. She says worm boxing is easy to get started,
takes a little investment, and the maintenance is low:


“Once you buy a batch of red worms, they’ll just keep on multiplying every
7 to 10 days, and um, you’ve got yourself a great composting bin.”


Brenda says worm box composting has a lot of benefits. In her town,
the trash pick-up service charges by volume. So, she saves money on her
garbage bill by putting most food waste into the box instead of the
trash can.


And she saves money on fertilizer. Brenda is a gardener. The compost
left by the worms is a great all-natural fertilizer. And in addition,
the worm’s, um, leavings work as a natural bug repellant as well:


“What it does is it makes the plant create an enzyme that is bitter to
aphids and other creatures.”


And Brenda thinks fewer chemicals and fossil fuel-based fertilizers
makes the food in her garden that much better:


“You know I can pick the tomato right off the plant. Ya know, wipe it
off, wash it off, And feel comfortable that I’m putting it in my mouth.
Everything has come from the earth. It’s a circle, it’s awesome.”


Brenda says to her, the biggest benefit of worm box composting comes
from letting people know there’s another way to dispose of food waste.
It’s all-natural. It means less garbage to pick up, less garbage to
fill up the landfill, and at the same time it saves money, provides a
superior fertilizer that’s all organic, and puts nutrients back into
the Earth… where they come from.


For the Environment Report, I’m Richard Annal.

Related Links

Upgrading Tired Hospital Food

  • Two gourmet chefs managing the kitchen at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth are adding organic vegetables to the menu. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that’s making efforts to spice up their menu:

Transcript

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s
Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that making efforts to spice
up their menu:


(Sound of elevator)


St. Luke’s is the smaller of Duluth’s two hospitals. Their motto could be
“we try harder.” Several years ago, the hospital put two chefs in charge
of the housekeeping, laundry, and food.


In the kitchen, there’s the usual industrial stoves and dishwashers, and a
long assembly line where workers fill the trays for patients, based on
what they’ve ordered.


“The patient fills out the menu, I’ll have this entrée and that salad and this
beverage; then as the tray moves down the conveyor belt, they look at the
menu and put on the appropriate products.”


Mark Branovan was a gourmet chef at restaurants in California’s wine
country. In that part of the world, they take their fresh fruits and
vegetables very seriously.


“We did very little of our produce buying from the big distributors; we
had local guys that would grow lettuce for us, and herbs for us, and tomatoes…
anything we wanted. So that just kind of rolled over for us into, if
we can do it for a restaurant, why can’t we do it for a hospital?”


It’s harder to do in this part of the country, where you can grow lettuce
for about half the year and you’re lucky to get a tomato at all. But
Branovan and his colleague, LeeAnn Tomczyk, decided not to let that
stop them.


Tomczyk was a chef in a trendy restaurant in Wisconsin before she took
the job at the hospital. She says when she first came here, she was
appalled at some of the things on the menu.


“YOu know the patient was able to pick a jell-o salad and a piece of cake.
Well, to me jell-o is a dessert but to them it was their salad and that
was their vegetable, and that wasn’t right.”


Tomczyk and Branovan started to add more fruits and vegetables,
including organic items, to the menu, but they learned to pick their
battles.


“When I tried to change some of the casserole dishes, and some of the
traditional northern Minnesota fare, I was met with some serious
resistance from our customers and our patients who said, ‘Yeah, we have
tater tot hot dish on our menu because we like it.'”


One of the first items to change was the milk. Now the hospital serves
hormone-free milk to patients in the rooms and workers in the cafeteria.
Tomczyk says she’s convinced hormone-free milk and organic food are
healthier. She says an organization devoted to helping people heal, like a
hospital, needs to think about healing in broad terms, even globally. She
says buying local food avoids long-distance transportation, with its heavy
reliance on polluting fossil fuels.


“And the introduction of pesticides and herbicides, and that getting into
our water systems, it’s that whole cycle, and we’re using more and more
these days, and I think it’s just got out of hand.”


The hospital is also committed to reducing waste. It freezes unused
portions and gives them to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. It sends
its food waste to the city compost pile.


St. Luke’s is a member of a hospital buying group that negotiates prices
with big producers like Pillsbury. Each hospital is supposed to buy a
certain percentage of its food through the buying group. When Branovan
and Tomczyk asked the distributor for hormone-free milk, the distributor
didn’t carry it.


“We had to actually get a waiver that says they will allow us to buy off-
contract.”


Branovan got a similar waiver to buy organic fresh fruit, and greens for
the cafeteria salad bar. He hopes to add more organic and locally-grown
foods.


Branovan says St. Luke’s is the first hospital in the region to ask the
buying group to supply hormone-free milk and organic vegetables, but
hospitals and schools on the west coast and east coast are doing it on a larger
scale.


James Pond is editor of Food Service Director, a trade magazine.
He says the movement will grow.


“The pricing advantages will in some ways level out, where if it becomes
important enough to the clientele, the food service operators will respond
by providing products in this manner.”


Some hospitals organize a farmer’s market to serve their workers, as a
way to introduce them to organic and local foods. Then they add those
foods to the cafeteria and patient meals. At St. Luke’s, they feature
organic food at company parties.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Eliminating Sources of Beach Contamination

  • This bread was dumped at a park along a Great Lakes beach for the gulls, geese, and squirrels that live there. Beach visitors often assume high bacteria levels that close beaches to swimmers are solely due to sewer overflows, but animals that defecate in the area also contribute to the problem.

This past summer beaches around the Great Lakes were closed in record numbers because of high bacteria counts. One government study indicates part of the problem might be animal feces, but the public does not seem to be aware that of the connection. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

This past summer beaches around the Great Lakes were closed in record numbers
because of high bacteria counts. One government study indicates part of the problem
might be animal feces, but the public does not seem to be aware that of the connection.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


High levels of bacteria in the water can make swimmers sick. Cameron Davis is with the
watchdog group, the Lake Michigan Federation. He says more can be done to stop the
contamination if sewer plants are improved and if beach visitors were more aware that
leaving food waste and feeding gulls and geese adds to the problem. That’s because the
birds defecate more, causing higher levels of bacteria along the shore.


“So, we’ve got the sewage treatment agencies saying ‘Oh, no. It’s the geese and the
gulls,’ and we’ve got the people feeding the birds saying ‘Oh, no. It’s sewage treatment
plants.’ So, you can see, it’s a combination of sources and there are things — I don’t care
what anybody says — there are things we can do to help solve the problem with all those
different sources.”


Davis says local governments need to start identifying and eliminating those sources of
beach contamination, starting with improving sewer plants and getting people to clean up
after their visits and to stop feeding wildlife at the beaches.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Global Worming

Remember when you were a kid, how you’d spend hours poking around,
looking for creepy crawly things? If one woman has her way, a lot more
of us will rediscover that joy…And as adults, also appreciate some
practical benefits. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson
explains:

Global Worming

Remember when you were a kid, how you’d spend hours sitting in the yard,poking around, looking for creepy crawly things? If one woman has herway, a lot more of us will rediscover that joy…And as adults, alsoappreciate some practical benefits. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’sWendy Nelson explains: