From food garbage to food gold

 

Americans throw out nearly 30 million tons of food every year—27 million of it from supermarkets, restaurants, and convenience stores. This is 25% of all food produced.

It is always delightful to find innovative companies that take what is an enormous problem and turn it into an enormously helpful solution. Eco Scraps is one such company that I think has a bright future ahead.

Started by a Brigham Young University student concerned about the amount of food left thrown out after eating at a favorite restaurant, Utah- based Eco Scraps has been winning innovation awards in the US, and is set to revolutionize the food scrap challenge. Basically, Eco Scraps collects the food that is otherwise thrown away from local restaurants and grocery stores, and turns it into high quality soil conditioner, using a completely organic process.

Gardeners use soil conditioners to improve the soil’s nutrient content. Eco Scraps says that most of the compost-manure based amendments on the market have high organic content but low nutrient values, so this initiative is a win-win situation where our food waste is turned into something that is not only incredibly useful but has the “same nutrient values as chemical based soil amendments”. Eco Scraps says that it is offering the only soil amendment on the market that “offers the best of both worlds”.

Their wonderful new product is offered for sale at local nurseries in Utah and apparently they’re producing 60,000 pounds of compost every month and it’s selling fast. I definitely think this fantastic idea is going to catch on!

What do you think of this initiative? Do you know of anything similar? Please share your comments.