A closed loop

Urban Gleaners mission sells itself: reducing waste and want by rescuing and redistributing food. As virtually everyone is a contributor to the waste stream it is easy to appreciate the endeavors of Urban Gleaners. It might take a greater leap– stretching of expectations and rearranging of dogmas to imagine eating gleaned foods. If you could afford to eat out every night– would you volunteer to eat “second hand” food? Recycled food? Someone else’s leftovers?

That is a harder sell. And yet- we’d like to think you would be surprised at the quality, and quantity, of food that we receive: thousands of pounds every year of gorgeous organic produce (kale, swiss chard, escarole, zucchini, apples), whole-grain breads, artisan breads, milk and cheese… the list goes on.

Urban Gleaners does serious vetting at our distribution center. Generally the rule of thumb is that if we would serve it on our dinner table, then we’re happy to re-distribute it to others. The food that we rescue from grocery stores, restaurants, farmers markets and events passes our rigorous inspection process. Any food we deem to be “in the twilight of its life” and unfit for our partners, we send to the compost. Even our business (the business of up-cycling waste) has a waste stream. The power of non-profits is their ability to capitalize on word of mouth and non-professional, sub-economic communities. We often make contacts with farmers who lust after our compost to feed it to their sheep or pigs, or supplement their own garden.

That’s why the Portland City Compost Program is so exciting. The program pioneers a new inner-city paradigm that’s closing the loop in our food system on a civic scale. And the city is not done yet. In 2013 the city hopes to issue compost bins to developments that were passed over in the first flush: apartment complexes greater than 3 units and commercial buildings. There are myriad ways to close the food system and navigate around waste. Some cities (like New Orleans) are developing rich non-profit networks that champion close loop models that take food waste, turn it into soil and then sell it.

In an article written last year about the burgeoning commercial composting network in New Orleans, the author laments the scale of the food waste problem. “Despite these proven models, just 3 percent of eligible materials — about 1 million tons — are composted each year in the United States, even though such materials make up about 32 percent of the waste that goes into landfills.” The solution isn’t just closing the loop through non-profit and governmental efforts, there needs to be a front end solution as well. We treat waste as a hallmark of success and wealth in our business culture. The greater amount you can afford to waste, the better your business is doing. Waste is a symptom of a sick system. Less waste is less expensive. As we say at Urban Gleaners, Reduce Waste and Want.