Composting pilot hopes to reduce Oahu food waste

The city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, have announced a new composting pilot project that aims to collect food waste from restaurants and turn it into compost for local farms.

The pilot, called the Oahu Compost Project, will send collected waste to Full Circle Farms in Waimanalo, where it will undergo aerobic digestion. The food waste is mixed with mulch in an industrial machine for four weeks, during which nitrogen from the food and carbon from the mulch create an ideal environment for microbes to break the material down for compost.

The farm has the capacity to process 1,000 pounds of food scraps and create 500 pounds of compost daily, reports Hawaii Public Radio.

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Currently, the project is limited to restaurants in Chinatown. Depending on the results of the pilot project, the city says it plans to expand the program island-wide.

To combat odors and pests, city officials say food waste will be in a sealed and locked trash bin. Additionally, regular pick-ups by the nonprofit organization Aloha Harvest, based in Honolulu, will bring the containers to the composting facility once a week.

Prior to this project, roughly 94,000 tons of Oahu’s commercial food waste went to the H-Power (Honolulu Program of Waste Energy Recovery) incinerator, operated by Morristown, New Jersey-based Covanta, where the waste is converted into electricity. The new composting pilot aims to address concerns from environmental advocates that claim the process still leaves ash and the “substantial amount of energy” it takes to burn moisture-packed foods.