Zero Waste Wrangler food composting program proposed for Quaker Valley area

A Pittsburgh-based food waste recycler has partnered with Sustainable Sewickley to try to bring a weekly curbside food scrap collection program to the Quaker Valley .

A Kickstarter effort was launched earlier this month to raise $25,000 and get 90 households to sign up for the service for one year.

They would be provided a five-gallon bucket to be picked up each week by the Zero Waste Wrangler, run by Kyle Winkler of Pittsburgh’s North Side.

The pilot program is open to people in Sewickley, Glen Osborne and Edgeworth. About 30 people have signed up and just over $6,500 raised as of April 21. That leaves just a few weeks to add 60 more households and generate $18,500. People can donate as little as $1.

Deadline to sign-up is May 13 with service to start in June if all goes well.

“We’re just so excited on so many levels,” said Sustainable Sewickley co-chair Suzanne Watters. “If the program happens, we’ll not send a lot of compostable garbage to the landfill for that year. That’s the main thing we’re excited about.

“We’re also excited about the idea of educating people and creating awareness around the waste problem we have in this country and the over 10,000 landfills in the United States. I think people hadn’t thought too much about single-use plastics and the amount of compostable garbage and all the disposable stuff we’re creating.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated 63.1 million tons of food waste was generated in the commercial, institutional and residential sectors in 2018. That’s about 22% of all municipal solid waste, according to the EPA’s website.

“We just can’t keep going out like we are, Watters said. “We can’t keep filling these landfills and creating these landfills.”

Winkler has been doing his part to change that. He launched his business in November 2018 and has been working with local restaurants and businesses to come up with composting plans.

He said it was a retooling of Steel City Soils, which was an urban food and yard waste recycling company.

“I believe in resource conservation,” Winkler said. “I like the idea of materials going back into reuse. Wasted food, coffee grounds, pizza-stained cardboard boxes, produce that’s rotten and can’t be sold; I like the idea of it going back into the soil. It’s just a better, cleaner and circular kind of world instead of things being stuck in a hole in the ground.”

Food waste collected – should the program get off the ground – would be sent to AgRecycle to be composted. Finished compost would be delivered back to those who request it in the fall.

Compost can be used in the home garden, to refresh soils in potted plants and is sold to organic farms, municipal parks, golf courses and landscapers in the region.

Winkler said they may add monthly services and pitch the program to the Quaker Valley Council of Governments to expand to other municipalities if the program is successful.

“As long as something changes, it will be exciting and it will be fun and it will be different,” he said. “I think we need to challenge the status quo, and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

More information about the effort is available on kickstarter.com, the Zero Waste Wrangler Facebook page and at sustainablesewickley.wordpress.com.