Thursday, October 29, 2009

Pre-Consumer Vegetative Waste Collection Pilot Program a Huge Success!

In February of 2009, Bend Garbage & Recycling began a pilot program with a few of their commercial customers collecting pre-consumer vegetative waste (mainly fruits and vegetables) and diverting these materials from the landfill and recycling it into BioFine & SoilBuilder compost at Deschutes Recycling.

St. Charles Medical Center and Food 4 Less with the help of Waste Solutions Northwest were the initial businesses to partner with Bend Garbage & Recycling. “Food 4 Less was our first customer to come to us and ask if we could work together to help divert these materials from the landfill. We were eager to develop this pilot program which has led to the expansion to St. Charles Bend as well as additional commercial customers of ours,” Brad Bailey, President of Bend Garbage & Recycling.

Food 4 Less is averaging over 4 tons of pre-consumer vegetative waste per month. “Pre-consumer vegetative waste represents approximately 25-30% of our disposal volume on a weekly basis. While we’ve had to make some operational adjustments and extra efforts, the diversion of this waste stream has significantly reduced our companies environmental impacts and been a natural fit for our business,” Jeff Duda, Owner of Food 4 Less.

“Through Bend Garbage’s pre-consumer vegetative waste composting program, we have kept 7.6 tons of material out of the landfill in the last quarter. St. Charles Bend is committed to reducing our impact on the environment. The pre-consumer vegetative composting program has given us another avenue to fulfill this commitment,” Mark Peterson, Director of Hospitality Services, St. Charles Bend & Redmond.

For more information regarding this program, contact Bend Garbage & Recycling at 382-2263.