Could Northbrook join Evanston, Oak Park and a few other Chicago suburbs in curbside collection of food garbage for composting?
The village may be taking the first step toward that eventuality Saturday, as the grass-roots Go Green Northbrook group holds an unusual Food Waste Fair to try to promote alternative uses of uneaten food to keep it out of landfills.
Northbrook Trustee Bob Israel, head of the Village Board’s Community and Sustainability Committee, said that an initiative to add food waste pickup to Advance Disposal’s contract for recyclable material and garbage never got off the ground for lack of interest from residents.
“It could happen if people are ready and willing for that sort of thing to happen,” Israel said. “I think composting is kind of a reasonable thing, to divert (food waste) from the landfill.”
Those who attend the fair, held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Northbrook Public Library, 1201 Cedar Lane, may learn some of what they need to know if they’re going to decide whether they want their village to negotiate for the higher scavenger costs that could be necessary, likely on an individual basis.
Go Green, collaborating with the library’s Sustainability Committee, plans to welcome experts who will operate several booths on the subject of striving to reduce food waste, which contributes to about 30 percent of landfill space, Go Green’s Tracey Becker said.
Also available will be two short films and a video on the subject. They include, at 10 a.m., “Just Eat It,” a 75-minute, humorous film about a Canadian couple who ate nothing but other people’s discarded food for six months.
In this country, according to the library, about 40 percent of food is thrown away.
“To me, that’s an astonishing amount,” Becker said.
“Solid waste is the most expensive for a user to pay for,” she added. “But food waste has value once it’s turned into compost.”
In Evanston, the city gives participating residents a “repurposed” garbage bin, in which they can put their landscape waste as well as much of their food waste, according to that city. Similarly, Oak Park residents get a cart, and if they use it for the food and brush, they no longer have to buy landscape bag pick-up stickers, according to that village.
Go Green’s Tara Wesselink and House 406’s Jen Eisen this summer put together a food-waste composting route for a handful of Northbrook residents, using the same pickup company that Evanston employs, Collective Resource. Wesselink said that it costs each home about $15 for each of two monthly pickups of the contents of a 5-gallon pail.
The small number of people on the route made it necessary for an “anchor,” paying more, and that role was filled by Eisen’s restaurant at 1143 1/2 Church St., Northbrook, Wesselink said.
Wesselink said she planned to be at each of the three Northbrook/Glenview School District 30 schools Nov. 15, when kids will be asked to put their lunch food waste in special bins instead of regular garbage cans. She said she’d take it with her to her house, where she’ll put it out for Collective Resource.
At the Northbrook food waste event, a TED Talk on Food waste, and a short film, “Not Really Expired,” will be available, dealing with how food labeling indicates to consumers that food is spoiled sooner than it actually is, leading to the destruction of millions of pounds of food annually.
A federal bill seeking to make the decision clearer for consumers, standardizing all food labels to just two categories — “best if used by” to indicate quality and “expires on” for safety — were introduced May 19. The Food Date Labeling Act has been waiting on the rolls of a congressional committee since that day.
Some organizations are now dedicated to conserving uneaten food through repackaging, including the Northwestern University branch of the Campus Kitchen Project, which picks up food on and around the campus for redistribution to hundreds of people weekly who can’t afford to buy all the food they need. The 33-campus organization reports preparing 3 million meals since 2001.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt
