EPA Region 7 and MARC staff tour composting facilities around Kansas City

On Aug. 16, partner organizations joined Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) and EPA Region 7 staff for a tour showcasing compost operations in the Kansas City region. Stops included Compost Collective at Urbavore Farms, Missouri Organic Recycling and KC Can Compost’s headquarters. EPA representatives got to see first-hand how local composting aligns with the agency's initiatives and regulations for waste management and environmental protection.

The group was led by EPA employee Gayle Hubert of the Sustainable Materials Management Section for Region 7's Brownfields Redevelopment and Reuse Branch, and included Regional Administrator Meg McCollister and Deputy Regional Administrator Edward Chu, among others.

With the average Kansas Citian producing 102 tons of garbage in their lifetime, productive alternatives with scalable opportunities are going to play an increasingly prominent role in the upcoming regional solid waste management plan. The touring delegation loaded up in several vans at the MARC offices, smeared sunscreen on their faces for several hot hours under an August sun, and hit the road for the first stop of the tour.

Compost plays a crucial role at the first stop on the tour: Urbavore Urban Farm, nestled on 13 acres near 55th Street and Blue Parkway. The nutrient-rich material is spread onto vegetable beds using sustainable, low-till methods by the farm's founders and local urban ag pioneers Dan Heryer and Brooke Salvaggio.

Heryer and Salvaggio reported that adding compost to their soil has increased produce yields by 50% — something local public works departments might be interested in. Municipalities can speed up infill vegetation in stormwater basins to combat contamination runoff during heavy rains.

Urbavore has the standard features of a small family farm — namely pig pens and chicken coops along with rows and rows of produce. Urbavore’s most unique feature, though, is the substantial piles of compost at the center of the farmstead. Heryer and Salvaggio not only swear by farming with compost, but they also own and operate Compost Collective, a regional collection network of over 3,000 food waste customers established in 2017. This program serves as a vital link in the local food ecosystem, converting curbside community food waste into a valuable resource for growers like them.

The collected scraps and other organic materials are mixed with leaves and wood chips, and the resulting compost blend is piled prominently in designated bays representing various stages of decomposition, progressing through each bay using a small skid steer until reaching the finishing bay. Here, the piles cool, fostering the growth of beneficial microbes and locking in essential nutrients.

Missouri Organic Recycling (MOR), located off of Old 210 Highway in rural Liberty, has a more industrialized process than the family operation at Urbavore. Heavy machinery breaks down, separates and moves the material around for aerobic composting that minimizes methane gas emissions (a major benefit of this waste method compared to the landfill). The heavy-duty equipment is necessary; MOR receives, on average, 87,000 pounds of waste daily, and converts it into commercially available compost and mulch. That accounts for over 270,000 tons of garbage diverted from traditional single-use trash landfills since 1992.

Over the rumble of trucks and loaders, Kevin Anderson, owner and vice president of marketing for MOR, shared the history of the company dating back to their days composting yard waste for Kansas City residents. To make the business more economically sustainable, they opened up their process to a less seasonal byproduct — food waste — in the early 2000s. MOR purchased its first loader through a MARC Solid Waste Management District grant. 

The organization has expanded to several processing sites around the region. But despite the mountains of material at the Northland site alone, the organization is operating at full capacity (and that’s with only 2% of regional food waste being diverted from landfills). MOR collects from 350 customers including restaurants, grocery stores, residents, offices and schools. Expanding wholesale operations like MOR would support a transformation from regional methane-producing garbage output into significant regional soil coverage on an industrial scale.

To their credit, the organization has rolled out new innovations for the region to process waste and create enriched soil material. A large Tiger Depackager machine slices up incoming packaged food waste, mixes it with 50 gallons of water per minute, ejects the plastic and cardboard packaging and pumps the liquid food waste slurry to be mixed with leaves for compost. 

"This isn't something that a lot of composters do," Anderson said. "It's not something that a lot of composters want to do."

Another cutting-edge process that MOR is working on is putting their biochar machine (funded by the Environmental Improvement and Energy Resources Authority) to work. Wood chips are heated in a sealed container without oxygen and emit combustible gases that are burned in a separate chamber. The heat generated can produce steam that can turn a turbine and produce electricity. This represents a waste-to-energy system that produces no toxic emissions, and the byproduct (the biochar) has proven to be a productive soil amendment itself. This byproduct can also be processed into building materials that lock up and sequester carbon for long periods of time.

On the van ride, tour participant and organics specialist for MOR Stan Slaughter took out a gallon-sized resealable bag filled with even more cutting-edge material inside. The aggregate smelled like campfire. Slaughter described it as "humi-soil," a compost alternative that requires no turning or aeration. It ferments biomass materials for six months (at a lower cost) and produces a soil inoculant that restores soil's fungal and bacterial balance. The bacterial photosynthesis that occurs captures nutrients, and actually makes water within the soil without the need for rain.

At the third and final tour stop, KC Can Compost, the tour was introduced to leadership staff at both KC Can Compost and neighboring Kanbe’s Markets, and learned how the two organizations work together to reduce food waste in the region. KC Can Compost aims to collect food waste on a more wholesale basis — in office buildings, schools, apartments and festival events (including their first-ever foray into the Kansas City Irish Fest over Labor Day weekend). Look for their orange wheeled bins that look like standard curbside trash bins deployed around festival grounds, alongside volunteers educating visitors on what can and can't be composted. 

Meanwhile, Kanbe’s, a community grocer serving local food deserts, collects surplus and unsellable foods — sending whatever is too damaged or past its prime to KC Can Compost.

An exciting development on the horizon, thanks to another MARC Solid Waste Management District grant, is the soon-to-be-deployed KC Can Compost food waste kiosks. Much like the NYC Compost smart kiosks deployed in recent years throughout New York City, these kiosks would be accessible 24/7 via a smartphone app for those who want to dispose of compostable materials on-the-go. 

The tour group reconvened at the MARC office for a lunch discussion about moving composting and the food waste circular economy forward in the Kansas City region. Participants heard guidance on grant opportunities and advocacy services like those offered by the Heartland Environmental Justice Center at Wichita State University.

The Heartland EJ, a part of WSU's Innovation Campus, opened a Region 7 Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center to cover the entire region of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and the nine tribal nations in between. Guidance from centers like this, McCollister believes, will provide the kind of technical assistance and training necessary to navigate federal grants processes, ensuring that underserved communities are getting access to these historic EPA funding opportunities.

Another takeaway of the post-tour discussion is that all of this compost has to go somewhere. 

"We need to spread this stuff everywhere, particularly on public parks and deteriorated land," says MARC Solid Waste Management Director Dianna Bryant. "It is not circular if it does not go back into the soil to grow food."

In addition to leading the effort to map out a comprehensive solid waste management plan for the MARC region, Bryant is holding a series of workshops with local stakeholders about the circular economy, and ways to reimagine it and activate it throughout the region. To learn more, please contact MARC.

And to learn more about food waste resources in and around the region, visit kcfoodwise.org.