Here’s a question to test your outlook on life: You have a bag that contains compostable food scraps to about the halfway point. Is the bag half-full or half-empty?
Actually, it’s neither! (Read on to understand what I mean.)
For this edition of Sustainable Event Case Studies, I’m revisiting my first zero waste formal banquet to share an important lesson I learned about food scrap composting.
The event was called Dropping Dimes, and it was a fundraiser held at Bankers’ Life Fieldhouse for former ABA players and families who have fallen on hard times. Going in, I was excited to apply the zero waste process to a banquet-style event—and to be able to tell people I sorted Bob Costas’ trash.
Because of the formal style of the event, all of the waste diversion happened in the back-of-house. My team worked closely with the catering team from Levy to separate waste as it was brought back on trays. A big part of that was scraping food scraps from plates into the compost.
The star of the dinner was a chicken breast I can only describe as gargantuan. As the Levy staff began bringing plates back, nearly all of them had a pretty sizable piece of chicken left.
I had gotten pre-approval from my compost facility for them to accept the meat scraps, so into the compost bin they went, along with mashed potatoes, vegetables, and salads.
We use certified compostable bags to line our compost bins, and these bags are made of plant-based plastic. Because this type of plastic is designed to break down quickly in a compost facility, compostable bags aren’t nearly as strong as a typical plastic trash liner.
The chicken and mashed potatoes quickly added up to some seriously heavy food scraps. We started the event by planning to change the compost bags when they were two-thirds full, but we found they were almost impossible to get out of the bins with that much weight.
We quickly adjusted to changing the bags when they were half-full, and sometimes just one-third full if they felt especially heavy.
So that’s the answer to my trick-question riddle from the beginning: If you have a half-full bag of food scraps, it isn’t half-full, it’s 100% full and needs to be changed out!
My top lessons I learned from this event were:
1. Plan to have twice the number of compost bags as you have for recycling or trash
2. Plan to change bags of food scraps when they’re between one-third and one-half full, based on how heavy they feel
I know this article was a little technical and in-the-weeds, but running out of compost bags (which we didn’t, thankfully) is a small oversight that could easily derail your zero waste program. Compostable bags are a great tool for keeping food scraps out of the landfill, as long as you understand their limitations and plan accordingly.
Learn my other zero waste secrets. Get a full, detailed blueprint for How to Plan Zero Waste Events in my online course. Learn more >>