Food scraps pickup program piloted by AI technology

BY SEBASTIAN STUDIER PRESS INTERN

Installation of AI sorting technology to remove recyclables including food scraps and organic-rich materials found in waste has been completed at the Ramsey/Washington Recycling and Energy (R&E) Center.

The new technology is estimated to divert annually a total of 60,000 tons of valuable material from landfills or incineration toward recycling, which is enough recyclables and food scraps to fill Allianz Field three times.

The enhancements were funded in part through the 2020 Minnesota State bonding bill.

The AI technology is the first step to begin a food scraps pickup program, which will be free to all citizens in Washington and Ramsey counties. Participating citizens will receive green compostable bags to deposit their food scraps and will throw away the green bags with their normal trash.

Once the waste arrives at the R&E Center, AI technology will extract the green food scrap bags from the rest of the waste and will be sent to industrial compost facilities to be turned into soil products.

Soon, according to R&E facility plans, food scrap bags and organic-rich materials will be processed through anaerobic digestion which will create renewable natural gas and valuable products for the community such as fertilizer and soil amendments.

Both Ramsey and Washington counties have been a part of the R&E since the 1980s. In 2016, the two counties purchased the R&E Center before passing waste designation ordinances which required all waste in the two counties to be collected at the R&E facility.

R&E Board Chair and Ramsey County Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt has been with the R&E facility from the beginning and thinks the new food scraps pickup program represents a big step forward in utilizing the resources available in waste.

“We really view the solid waste that comes here as a resource,” Reinhardt said. “When we purchased the facility, we made a commitment that we were not going to just continue to do the same old same old, we wanted to move waste up the hierarchy, and this program is a really big part of that. We have valuable resources within the garbage, I know that sounds kind of silly, but there’s a lot of energy that is in what we throw out.” R&E receives trash produced by over 800,000 residents and 70,000 businesses in the two counties. It includes trash from the Minnesota State Fair and the State Capitol and this facility processes 13% of the state’s trash. According to Joint Leadership Team member and Ramsey County division Manager Michael Reed, roughly 20% of the trash collected in Ramsey and Washington counties is food waste.

The food scraps collection program, currently in its initial pilot stage was launched in select neighborhoods in Maplewood, Newport, Cottage Grove and North St. Paul in April.

Reed says that within the next few years, the program will roll out to all the residents in Ramsey and Washington counties.

The goal of the counties is to be at 40% or 127,000 household participation at the five-year mark after the program is available to every household. At that time, the facility expects to collect around 30,000 tons of food scraps annually from residents, which will help the counties move toward the state of Minnesota’s 75% recycling goal by 2040.

With the program still in its pilot phase, the AI sorting machines are still working to improve each time they sort through waste. Currently, the machines are at a 75% compliance rate with the materials the machines are picking out. The machines must get to a compliance rate of 94% when picking out the food scrap bags, to be accepted at a composting site.

“Ultimately, the material from this facility that’s collected from the food scraps program is going to be composted in the short term and then move toward anaerobic digestion in the long term to