WACO, TX — Food composting has a multitude of benefits. It's a great way to recycle and also keep landfills from overflowing.
Urban Reap, the sustainability green house run by Mission Waco, has relaunched it's Community Food Waste Collection Program.
When you compost with Urban Reap, they take your food and turn it into fertilizer that can be used in your home to grow flowers and other items.
"30 to 40% of what we throw away can be generated into beautiful compost," said Jimmy Dorrell, co-founder of Mission Waco.
The Environmental Protection Agency predicted that in 2018, 63.1 million tons of food was wasted. Composter Ashley Millerd is trying to change the food wasting narrative.
"It's a really good way to enrich your lawn and your garden and things like that," Millerd said.
Composting food mean creating a fertilizer to help your yard grow any sort of produce or plant you might want. Although, Millerd sees it as more than just a benefit to Mother Nature.
"It's really awesome and a neat way to really explain to the kids why you want to compost and throwing this all away and ending up in the landfill," Millerd said.
With Urban Reap's Community Food Waste Collection program, you can compost things like dairy, meat, uncoated paper, coffee grounds and even plant waste.
Urban Reap has a green or blue bucket you can subscribe to. The green gets composted in the traditional pile style, while the blue goes in Urban Reap's composting machine.
"In 24 hours, an incredible 24 hours, we have the most beautiful compost you ever seen," Dorrell said. "Then people can come buy the compost and we give discounts to those that are in our program."
As more food is wasted, our landfills will grow. The EPA estimates 35,280,000 tons of food was taken to the U.S. landfills in 2018.
Millerd is hoping by composting, her backyard doesn't end up in the landfill.
"That's what we like to do. We like to keep as much out of our landfill as possible. It's just another way to give back to the environment," Millerd said.
If anyone has questions, you can visit Urban Reap Thursday and Friday 10am-6pm and Saturday 10am-2pm. You can register for their program here.
