Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
Need to set up your free e-Newspaper all-access account? click here.
Non-subscribers
Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber.
Register to comment
Click here create a free account for posting comments.
Note that free accounts do not include access to premium content on this site.
I am anchor
ENVIRONMENT
Phoenix Convention Center converts tons of food waste to compost
(City of Phoenix)
Phoenix Convention Center food waste is collected three times a week and sent out to make compost.
Posted
INDEPENDENT NEWSMEDIA
Tons of food waste are generated by the Phoenix Convention Center from catering services, grab-and-go menu items and PHX Kitchens Downtown Food Hall.
But the waste doesn’t go to waste.
Aventura, a subsidiary of Aramark, and the convention center work with the Phoenix Public Works Department to find solutions to diverting food waste.
And for about six years, food waste has been made into compost, according to a city release.
“We’ve developed a really great partnership,” Lorizelda Stoeller, deputy public works director, said. “It’s awesome the Convention Center and Aventura are willing to try new things.”
Through June 2023, the program has diverted 58.67 tons of food waste, according to Stoeller.
Waste is collected three times a week at the kitchen dock and then is is put into a de-packager machine that separates non-organic material. From there, the waste is taken to the Phoenix-owned facility at 27th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road for composting, the release stated.
Denali, a national company, is contracted to run the facility, Stoeller said. They take the compost, bag it up and sell it at big box stores and to local farms. The city's parks have also found, and continue to find, use for the compost.
“It all goes back into the community somehow,” Stoeller said.
The convention center’s composting program was put on pause during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Stoeller said, but as it geared up to play host to fan activities for Super Bowl LVII in February 2023 the program re-emerged.
The goal of Super Bowl LVII was to be a zero-waste event, Stoeller said. The Phoenix Convention Center during two weeks around the game diverted 11 tons of food waste from landfills to the composting operation.
“Now we are getting ready for the NCAA Men’s Final Four next year, and there’s a big emphasis on making that a zero-waste event like we did for Super Bowl LVII,” Stoeller said.
