The Shops at Mission Viejo to Start Turning Food Scraps into Energy

From the city of Mission Viejo:

The city of Mission Viejo and Waste Management are working with Simon, the company that manages The Shops at Mission Viejo, to roll out a restaurant food waste recycling program today.

The program collects scraps from food prep and plate scrapings in heavy duty yellow plastic trash bags. When the bags are full, Waste Management collects them in its existing single-stream recycling program and takes them to its Orange Recycling Facility, where the materials are converted into a unique engineered bio-slurry through Waste Management’s proprietary Centralized Organic Recycling equipment (CORe) system.

The bio-slurry is then trucked to the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts Joint Water Pollution Control Plant in Carson, where it is added to the plant’s anaerobic digesters significantly increasing biogas production of methane, creating green energy.

The city’s sustainability consultant, EcoNomics, and Waste Management are working with restaurants in The Shops at Mission Viejo to provide technical assistance and train staff on how to participate in the program. So far, the Cheesecake Factory, Charlie’s Grilled Subs, SmashBurger, Blaze Pizza, Ruby’s, Muscle Beach Hotdogs and Lemonade, Paradise Bakery and Jamba Juice have all signed up for the program.

The Cheesecake Factory is expected to be the largest contributor of food scraps to the program. The restaurant recently hired a director of corporate sustainability to manage such environmental programs, “which are viewed as a means to be a good member of the community and to reduce operating costs,” the company said.

EcoNomics estimates the food scrap recycling program could collect more than 20 tons of food waste per month when it is fully implemented. The Shops at Mission Viejo’s management team views the program as a way to showcase its continued commitment to its corporate sustainability objectives, which include increased waste reduction, a mall official said.

“Recycling programs are in place at all Simon shopping centers and we continue to seek opportunities to shift the mix of resource use from waste disposal to recycling, lending scale to local community efforts to reduce our reliance on landfills,” said Kurt Webb, general manager of The Shops at Mission Viejo. “The Food Waste Program is a perfect example of how Simon is working together with our tenants to incorporate more sustainable practices into our operations.”

California State Assembly Bill 1826, which was signed by Governor Jerry Brown in September, makes it mandatory for large generators of organic waste like food scraps to make arrangements to divert these materials away from the landfill by April 1, 2016.

Many restaurants in the center jumped at the opportunity to be in compliance with the new state law ahead of the 2016 deadline. Several other states in the nation have banned organic waste from landfills, including Connecticut and Massachusetts. Diverting organic waste away from the landfill into composting or anaerobic digestion facilities can help communities reduce their environmental impact. When organics are placed in the landfill, they generate methane gas, which is known to contribute to climate change.

“Our CORe technology allows us to recycle more food and organics than ever before offering the region a viable green solution,” said Tom Koutroulis, Waste Management’s district manager. “Material that once took up valuable space at the landfill is now extracted from the waste stream and it’s being put to beneficial re-use as we work closely with our municipal customers to meet state diversion goals.”

PHOTO Patch file photo.