By Rodd Cayton
Food that doesn’t reach the bellies of Albuquerque students could help heal the planet.
A new partnership will divert uneaten organic foods into a composting operation that will return nutrients to the soil. The program is part of Albuquerque Public Schools’ effort to do its part in New Mexico’s Healthy Universal School Meals Initiative. The goal is to expand the pilot into a permanent, district-wide initiative.
APS’ central kitchen prepares some 46,000 meals a day. The other partners are Soilutions, Denali Corp, and the Ciudad Soil & Water Conservation District. The conservation district this school year is funding a pilot program aimed at reducing the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills.
Soilutions CEO Dawn Dewey said the new initiative builds on the company’s Generation Grow program, which has donated compost, soil, and mulch to schools and community gardens across New Mexico. She said the APS initiative will help move the area from a linear environment where food goes to a landfill and releases methane into the air to a circular one in which food that does not get consumed becomes all-natural compost that goes into feeding New Mexico’s depleted soils.
“But what I’m more excited about … is the fact that this is going to create an opportunity to educate our future generations and all the kids that go to APS that there is a better way,” Dewey said. “That unconsumed food never belonged in landfills, shouldn’t go in landfills, and hopefully in the very near future won’t be going into landfills.” She said Soilutions’ customers are mainly home gardeners and commercial/institutional users with landscaping needs.
Denali will make weekly trips from the central kitchen to Soilutions’ South Valley plant, where Denali’s depackaging technology will allow workers to efficiently separate food waste from its packaging, partnership officials say. Dewey said Denali has made three pickups from the central kitchen in the three weeks since the program launch, resulting in 1,680 pounds of food diverted from the landfill. She said that pace translates to about 29,000 pounds per year, though as the process becomes more efficient, the amount will grow. Ultimately Dewey said, trucks will be hauling all of the food waste from each school.
Marie Johnson, APS’ executive director of food and nutrition services, said the new waste-recycling initiative is just one small step toward the district’s goal of diverting all of its food and milk waste from our land. Another facet of the strategy is share tables, at which students can drop off unwanted food for others to take if they wish.
Erin Blaz of Ciudad said the program represents an opportunity to model good conservation strategies for students. “Our goal is to make sure students and families see these habits show up in their everyday lives,” Baiz said. “Because adults have to practice what we’re teaching, too.”
Elizabeth Anichini, the Healthy Universal School Meals program manager at the New Mexico Public Education Department, said the program’s primary goal is to ensure that every student in New Mexico has access to a healthy breakfast and lunch every day, free of cost, and that that food is eaten. “We are investing in that meal quality, having fresh options that students are excited to eat. But we know that even if we do all of those things exceedingly well, there is some food waste that is always going to be inevitable, and that’s what makes this project so exciting.”
APS is one of the first school districts in the country to launch a food waste recycling compost initiative.