I've presented the following findings:
Power point presentation in April 21st 2009
Sustainable Restaurants Initiative
Composting Kitchen Waste Program
by Takagi
As a Whitehorse resident interested in helping businesses to improve their environmental performance, I am implementing a community sustainability project through Whitehorse City Council’s Sustainable Ambassador program. This project assists businesses to reduce their environmental impact by commercially composting their organic waste. Does your business want to:
Reduce emissions!
Every week thousands of tonnes of food waste goes to landfill and emits harmful greenhouse gases
Save money!
Reduce usage of plastic garbage bags
Enhance your restaurant’s reputation
Be recognised as a sustainable business
Add value to your restaurant / facility
Environmentally friendly and sustainable attitude
Are you interested in being a model restaurant that inspires other restaurants?
If so, please contact Atsushi, Whitehorse Sustainable Ambassador on
xxxx-xxxx
Offer open only until 23rd November, 2008
Don’t miss out!
Sustainability Issue/Problem Identified:
An average 15.7kg of garbage per Australian household is sent to landfill each week, and
23.5% of this is food waste which is fully compostable.[1] If this is the known household waste, imagine how much compostable waste would be produced by restaurants. This current state of affairs that led me to believe that a change or improvement was required [1] ‘Living Smart: Reduce Waste and Save’, Western Australia Department of Planning and Infrastructure and Department of Environment and Conservation, February 2008, http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/ls_ReduceWasteSave.pdf
Reducing the enormous amount of waste that restaurants send to landfill (plastic bags and food boxes, compostable waste, and so on) each year would also greatly help in reducing carbon emissions from landfill.
Kitchen waste at restaurants could be ideally collected and made into compost or garden fertiliser. This will help reduce the amount of organic waste but might also go to the use of community gardens or backyard farmers in the Box Hill area.
Whitehorse Council's Home Composting Incentive Program* is popular, and there is a relatively new Green Waste collection, but at the moment, the council collects the general waste and recyclable plastic, metal and paper materials, there is no mandatory legislation for composting raw waste, for instance there is no raw waste rubbish collection as such.
*“invite home and other local businesses in the municipality to register for a voucher that entitles them to 25% off the purchase price for selected home composting products from participating suppliers”
http://www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au/Page/Page.asp?Page_Id=1700
- Waste adds $344m to carbon cost -
by Harvey Grennan, September 16, 2008
"The Australia Institute estimates that the Federal Government's plan to include landfill in its carbon pollution reduction scheme will cost councils $344 million a year.
This would be passed on to ratepayers in higher rates, fees and charges, the Australian Local Government Association says. The estimate is based on a figure of $20 a tonne for emissions from waste and does not include the cost of measures to adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change."
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/15/1221330747969.html
Therefore, I tried to contact local restaurants’ owners introducing Composting Kitchen Waste Program in Box Hill central area.
Program participants:
Restaurants undertaking the two-month program (after discussion with Kate, we decided to have a two-month plan to more clearly measure differences in number of waste bags, etc.)
A Korean restaurant (Suit: Wine Bar) accepted the offer of the kitchen waste project. KS Environmental company has only 12 month contract so this project would be held longer than 2 months. Another Japanese restaurant showed tremendous interest to participate in the project in near future.
KS environmental is one of recycling companies which also collect raw wastes from the major facilities, such as MCG, Caulfield racing course, and Holmes Glenn Institute, etc.
Goals / Objectives of the Project:
1. Participants to take action to reduce the amount of plastic bag and compost their kitchen waste – this action to be at a lifestyle change level, and be sustainable.
2. Investigate compostable waste management options for local restaurants as a community-based behaviour change program.
The followings are the examples of barriers owners have:
Barriers to change:
Behaviour change at an industry level can often be quite difficult to start, and there might be simpler ways to recycle/compost the waste.
I contacted about 10 restaurants in total and they have never heard of kitchen waste would be recycled
using conventional rubbish bin (120 litre) instead of use of plastic bags. I thought there would be the need / opportunity for a change in a sustainability issue.
One of the restaurant owners mentioned that “When the restaurant gets very busy, we don’t have enough time to sort out the garbage”. “quicker service to the customers is first priority”, etc.
“I can’t afford it”. Many restaurants recycling / composting approaches cost much.
It would be taken care of by entities (KS Environmental) in Whitehorse district.
“It’s too hard”. Workers at restaurants are often too busy/tired to devote the time andeffort. “staff have their old habits which are hard to be changed” This can be compounded by perceptions of how difficult it can be to get waiting and kitchen staff involved in something like sorting out all the different types of raw wastes at restaurants.
The majority of restaurants’ owners was not keen on this program as after all.
“Language barrier”. When I (project initiator) approached a couple of restaurants’ owners asking for participating in the composting project, some of them asked me whether I would be able to speak Chinese. Although they’ve been operating their business for a long, they wouldn’t speak much of English language so that they were depending on their native language, Chinese so was Vietnamese owner who was elderly could not speak enough English. This language barrier seemed to be one of the obstacles for communication between project organiser and the potential participants.
Possible solutions for meeting objectives of the project:
The Community Based Social Marketing model of behaviour change – by Doug McKenzie-Mohr – will be used to meet the objectives of the project in cooperation with the Whitehorse Sustainability Strategy 2008–2013: our EcoVision.
Commitment: This will be done by signing up a “waste pledge” form owners after we reach a verbal agreement.
Prompts: I visited restaurants when I have take-aways or eat-ins. I distributed the flyer (shown before on slide) and explained about the program. I also casually had a look at their kitchens and also interviewed them so as to encourage further exploration of any issues they have.
Norms: As this particular participant, Korean restaurant’s owner, has been aware of this raw wastes initiatives in his hometown, so that he and his staff see something bigger picture of this program.
Incentives: The council could provide an award of “Good practice” (sticker) which will be displayed on the restaurants’ front windows so public will be aware of waste management done by the restaurants. This would perhaps encourage the restaurants’ management policy as Cooperate Social Responsibility. This would also attract more customers who are educated and environmentally conscious.
Convenience: This is critical, and it will determine whether the program will stand
or fall. The advantages are that participants (owners) won’t have to go out of their way to be involved, and that the bins for only raw wastes are used at the restaurants.
Evaluation: The number of rubbish bags (for raw wastes) is required to be reduced or wheelie bins for raw waste collected, and most of all, behaviour change among staff at the restaurants.
Measurement tools
There will be two measurement tools, both of them repeatable:
Waste attitudes survey: a very short and simple (non-threatening) survey about
the participants’ attitudes to and understanding of kitchen waste, its potential use in food-growing, and the relevance of both to climate change in general.In order to persuade the owners, I used a merit - demerit chart which clearly shows owners of the restaurants i.e. costing, environment and value of the program (see below, table 1).
Table 1
| Aspects to improve | Demerit | Merit |
| Costing | More than $ for ( ) x 120 litres wheelie bins by Cleanaway, ltd | KS Environmental offers $ ( ) x 120 litres wheelie bins |
|
| Black plastic bags x $50 per week?
| No need to use plastic bags Save $2400 / year |
|
| The City of Whitehorse would not offer anything for this.
| The City of Whitehorse offers incentive. As CoW election approaches, they cannot promise anything further than this at this moment. However, they are looking into it from the next year. *Rubbish collectors introduce weighing bins from 2009. Total saving: Approx $2600/year |
| Environment | Plastic bags = contamination | No contamination |
|
| Stays in the landfill
| Biodegradable = compost reduce the amount of waste? |
|
|
Releasing gas | Not much gas = contains in the soil |
|
| Climate change = indirectly affects our countries’ crop productions, sea level and furthermore for the next generation |
More environmentally friendly |
| Value | No value = same as usual | Higher value = Good reputation |
|
|
| CoW provides ★ for this program |
|
|
| Publicity = Leaders / The Age newspapers = more regular customers! |
|
|
| Role model for other restaurants Education for staff and customers! |
Waste company’s brochure is inserted here.
Evaluation of the project:
Develop a time line (see table below for example) including all relevant activities to be carried out during the time of the project e.g:
It is necessary to avoid conducting this program during the Christmas season as the restaurants get extremely busy, so my proposed time line is as follows:
Timing Activity Objective(s)
October 6th– 10th Plan & design program; gather resources; write the project document
October 13th ~ 27th Initiate Contact of participants
Organise the rubbish bins for the restaurants and arrange the dates when they are collected by a private company. Also inspect the sites where the wastes are going to be composted.
October 17th – 27th Session follow up
December – Present (April) Some scheduled drop-ins and unscheduled phone calls and encouragement was provided over four months to fulfil the Pledge.
At the end of the four months, the restaurants re-complete “Waste Sense” survey.
Wrap up? still continuing! Final project report.
Recommendations and Suggestions:
Although only one restaurant participated in the composting kitchen waste program, I met another restaurant owner who showed interest. If this program expects a bigger scale, it is necessary that more diversified informants (Chinese and Vietnamese) to be recruited such as from Asian Business Association of Whitehorse (ABAW) and provide a city council meeting with local restaurant owners in order to introduce them to participate in this commercially composting their wastes.
Compost: all the organic food waste that gets thrown out perhaps those businesses would consider one of those large commercial eco- Bokashi bins which convert food scraps to garden fertilisers….. Council might consider offering these bins to group of participating businesses in a trial project.
CoW incorporates with Secondbite which collects unwanted edible food / ingredient from retailers, etc. thus would reduce the kitchen wastes.
If these raw materials can be composted in a regulated and organised manner, then restaurants might change their behaviour, if they can see it is beneficial for them and environment and not too difficult to do. Especially there is a rumour that heavier levy for the wastes is going to be introduced in Victoria as N.S.W has already been taxing it’s wastes.
Perhaps, we need to change our daily behaviour and utilise new technologies to reduce the wastes.
Looking forward to hearing your comments!
