Every Monday, Ricky Blanding drives his Ford Ranger pickup truck around Detroit along a carefully planned route.
asserted
Blanding → drive → route
Blanding hops in and out of the truck, grabbing buckets of food scraps from porches and restaurants, piling those scraps into bins in the truck bed and driving them to a composting site.
Blanding is the CEO of Scrap Soils, one of the many budding food waste collection services across the country helping to divert food from landfills and make composting more accessible.
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composting → hop → landfills
It’s especially important for those who can’t compost at home, who live in cities without municipal curbside pickup or who can’t get to a drop-off location.
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who → ’ → location
Composting leftover coffee grounds, eggshells, carrot tops and more reduces the amount of food that goes into dumps where it produces the potent greenhouse gas methane.
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it → compost → methane
It also ultimately helps create healthy soil for gardeners and urban farmers.
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It → help → gardeners
Experts say companies like Scrap Soils are an important part of cleaning up the broader food ecosystem.
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companies → say → ecosystem
Emily Cassidy, research associate at climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown, said composting offers the dual benefits of reducing landfill methane emissions and, once the composting process is complete, returning nutrients to soil.
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process → say → soil
“Because methane has such a big impact on the climate in a short amount of time, the more we can reduce methane, it is like pulling the emergency brake on climate change,” Cassidy said.
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Cassidy → have → change
Beyond mitigating climate change, composting can also improve local food production, she said.
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she → mitigate → production
“That’s a way that we can see that we’re benefiting the environment, because we’re taking food and then replenishing the ground with those nutrients,” she said.
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she → ’ → nutrients
Detroit homes and restaurants use the service
Blanding, a 34-year-old native Detroiter, co-launched Scrap Soils in 2020 to play a local part in solving a statewide food waste problem that mirrors what’s happening around the globe.
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what → use → globe
Food waste is a huge source of methane in Michigan landfills, estimates say, and accounts for millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in the state.
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estimates → say → state
In Detroit, more than 70 homes and businesses are signed up for Scrap Soils’ weekly pickups.
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homes → sign → pickups
It’s an easier way to compost than making space in one’s backyard or driving to a city drop-off site.
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It → ’ → site
Home pickups start at $15 per month, while businesses pay $60 per month or more, depending on volume.
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businesses → start → volume
“We go through a lot of eggs, so mostly egg scraps, eggshells and the cardboard.
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We → go → eggs
We put all of our bread scraps, stale bread scraps, in here,” said Lou Hammer, the restaurant’s executive chef, pointing to a large bin with bags of food waste inside.
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Hammer → put → waste
“It doesn’t take any extra effort,” she said of the pickup service.
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she → take → service
“This was going to go in a bag anyway.
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This → go → bag
It’s just going to go in a green bag instead.”
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It → go → bag
Scraps get turned into a rich soil additive
After completing his nine-hour, more than 100-mile (160-kilometer) weekly route, Blanding drops off the waste at Scrap Soils’ partner, Sanctuary Farms in Detroit.
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Blanding → turn → Detroit
There, everything from apple cores to rotted pumpkins to corn husks is composted into a rich soil additive that’s available for purchase.
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that → rot → purchase
“Food waste has not only become the problem,” Blanding said, “but it’s also the solution to so many issues in climate change.”
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it → become → change
The company ultimately plans to purchase a larger truck, as well as its own property and equipment for composting.
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company → plan → composting
It’s fundraising to meet a matching grant through the state.
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It → fundraise → state
As Blanding seeks to grow, he’s come up against skepticism that a small team with limited resources can make a big impact.
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team → seek → impact
Companies like Scrap Soils also face challenges ranging from gaining visibility to getting people to actually sign up and commit.
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people → face → visibility
At the same time, emphasizing what can and cannot be composted, and how to do it correctly — such as removing produce stickers before putting a peel in the bucket — is key to its success, too.
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what → emphasize → success
“The role of a hauler is very important, and education around composting is also very important,” Blanding said.
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Blanding → say → composting
“Being able to continue to get more engagement and more partnership, those things go far in helping us to expand this tiny effort into something that actually can scale,” he added.
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he → continue → something
City initiatives are expanding with demand
Despite hurdles, other independent composting programs and companies are expanding.
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programs → expand → hurdles
Examples include the Denver Compost Collective, Nashville’s Compost Co. and Compost Now, which operates in Atlanta and the North Carolina cities of Raleigh, Durham and Asheville.
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which → include → Raleigh
Hundreds of municipal governments oversee food waste pickup or drop-off programs to allow for composting, though a much smaller number than the thousands of ordinary waste programs nationwide, indicating room to grow.
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Hundreds → oversee → room
A 2023 report by BioCycle, a publication on composting and recycling, identified 400 municipally supported residential food waste collection programs in the country, 230 of which offered curbside pickup.
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230 → identify → pickup
For many U.S. cities, compost will play a key role in broader climate plans, incentivizing more of them to start investing in it.
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compost → play → it
Detroit’s climate strategy, for instance, calls for reducing its municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 100% by 2050.
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strategy → call → 2050
Along with accelerating energy efficiency in homes and buildings, and increasing cleaner mobility, one of its strategies to get there is a three-year plan to divert 15% of waste from landfills.
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one → accelerate → landfills
Detroit started its first municipal food scrap drop-off initiative this past year with a single central site.
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Detroit → start → site
Hundreds of residents registered to participate, filled buckets at home and dropped them off at the city’s site.
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Hundreds → register → site
The city plans to expand its efforts by offering drop-off bins in more locations as well as on-site municipal building composting.
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city → plan → composting
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
