Jacksonville City Council approves pilot composting program for Riverside restaurants

Jacksonville City Council has approved a new six month pilot program to encourage and test the efficacy of commercial composting, a type of food waste management, through partnership with local composting facility Sunshine Organics and Compost.

The goal of the program is not to start a new city-operated compost collection but to encourage and normalize composting as a waste management alternative. The city has almost no financial obligation to the program. After six months, its role will end, leaving future composting endeavors to private businesses.

“It's a process of getting composting in the minds of the citizens of Jacksonville and seeing how the process works,” Ron Salem, council member and sponsor of the bill, said.

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Jacksonville has faced criticism in recent years for its waste management programs and for suspending its recycling program in 2021.

The city’s trash fund stays in the red because of a gap between what the city charges and its operating expenses. To offset the cost, the city pulls from the general fund – something Salem said would possibly come up in council to alter once a new mayor and council are elected in the spring.

City Council formed a special committee on waste management early last year to develop multi-faceted solutions to the city’s waste management. Salem chaired the committee, which he said is where he got the ideas for recent recycling initiatives and for the compositing pilot.

The recycling and composting programs were separate issues from the trash fund, Salem said, and composting seemed like a logical next step to take pressure off Jacksonville’s singular landfill.

While recycling involves material, man-made objects, composting is the process of taking organic materials, like uncooked food scraps, and converting them into nutrient-rich soil.

Sunshine Organics will train around 15 restaurants in the Riverside and Avondale area on how to separate food for composting. A city truck will then collect restaurant composting bins once a week for six months and deliver the waste to the composting site in Northwest Jacksonville where it will be turned into soil Sunshine Organics will either sell or donate.

Restaurants will pay $50 per bin each month, so the amount they pay will increase depending on how many bins they require. The money collected will go to a trust, and at the end of the six months, the total will be divided equally between the city and Sunshine Organics.

Duval County Public Schools will also participate for free – scraps will be picked up from the Nutrition Service Center in Paxon where most of the food is prepared and delivered to DCPS schools.

Advocates say there are potential economic and environmental incentives

Christina and Mike Kelcourse obtained the last of their permits for commercial composting at Sunshine Organics last year, Christina Kelcourse said, making the timing of the pilot program ideal.

Their site in Northwest Jacksonville can process between 5,000 to 5,800 tons of compost per month, she said – comparatively, the recycling center for Jacksonville handles about 3,400 tons per month.

They do not yet, however, own their own truck to pick up from restaurants. Their goal over the coming months, Christina Kelcourse said, is to “pick up where the city leaves off.”

The pilot will help them judge how many restaurants can be served in a single weekday, she said. She currently has around 30 restaurants interested, and if through the pilot, the city’s driver can handle more than 15 pick-ups, they will expand the list.

She hoped diverting from trash pick-up would cut down on costs for restaurants as some trash pick-up companies charge by weight, but that businesses may also be swayed by the environmental impact.

“Composting is going to be something that we need,” Christina Kelcourse said. “It helps the soil on the back end, it reduces the landfill and methane gas on the front end. It's environmentally positive.”

Composting in Jacksonvile beyond the pilot program

Shannon Blankinship, Executive Director of Riverside Avondale Preservation, believed the area to be a perfect spot for a composting test-run.

“I think that especially our neighborhood has a demand for restaurants that have sort of those kinds of ethical values,” Blankinship said. “And so, that with that isn't necessarily an incentive at a government scale, but it could be an incentive at a business level to participate in a program like this.”

RAP facilitates the Riverside Arts Market every Saturday, where there is already a spot for residents to drop off their weekly compost for $16 per month through Apple Rabbit Compost.

The city itself is a long way from picking up residential composting, Salem said, but starting with businesses would be a “low hanging fruit” for anyone hoping to eventually expand their reach.

Blankinship approved of the city ultimately handing the program to businesses, saying the scale of the consolidated city would keep something like composting from being cost effective city-wide.

She did hope, however, that the city would find a way after the pilot program to brand or recognize businesses who compost in the long term for helping the environment.

“Jacksonville has really had to reckon with its recycling program over the last few years, and what we all want to see is a cleaner city,” Blankinship said. “And so, really thinking about our waste, and the products that we purchase, and the products that we then give to our patrons at restaurants, and then what gets thrown away, that sort of full lifecycle of each of those decisions.”

Ultimately, Christina Kelcourse hoped the program would kick-start composting in the region – she said she has already talked with mayors at the Beaches about starting similar programs there.

“It [compost] helps with flooding. It helps with erosion. It helps with pest control,” Christina Kelcourse said. “So, it's a very, for the sake of being not humble at all, it's a very noble cause.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville City Council approves composting program for Riverside