City of Philadelphia - File #: 140626

• File #: 140626
• Version: 0
• Type: Resolution
• Status: ADOPTED
• File created: 6/19/2014
• In control: Joint Committees on Streets and Services & The Environment
• Title: Authorizing the Joint Committees of Streets and Services and the Environment to hold hearings on the feasibility of and benefits to the City of residential food waste recycling including its impact on environmental quality, hunger prevention, economic savings and job creation.
• Sponsors: Councilmember Bass, Councilmember O'Brien, Councilmember Reynolds Brown, Councilmember Squilla

Date	Ver.	Action By	Action	Result	Tally
11/12/2014	0	Joint Committees on Streets and Services & The Environment	HEARING NOTICES SENT
11/12/2014	0	Joint Committees on Streets and Services & The Environment	HEARING HELD
11/12/2014	0	Joint Committees on Streets and Services & The Environment	RECESSED
6/19/2014	0	CITY COUNCIL	Introduced and Ordered Placed on This Week's Final Passage Calendar	Pass
6/19/2014	0	CITY COUNCIL	ADOPTED & REFERRED

Title
Authorizing the Joint Committees of Streets and Services and the Environment to hold hearings on the feasibility of and benefits to the City of residential food waste recycling including its impact on environmental quality, hunger prevention, economic savings and job creation.

Body
WHEREAS, "Food accounts for about 13 percent of the nation's trash, the third-largest component after paper and yard trimmings. Based on that average and the $65 per-ton rate to haul away trash in Philadelphia, it costs the City approximately $6.1 million a year to move uneaten food from plate to landfill," according to the Mayor's Office of Sustainability's Greenworks Philadelphia 2009 report; and

WHEREAS, Decomposing food buried in landfills releases methane, a potent, dangerous greenhouse gas and incineration- a common alternative to burying waste in landfills creates environmental and health hazards through the release of toxins into our air supply; and

WHEREAS, Because incinerators are inefficient at generating electricity from burning waste, and recycling and composting conserve three to five times more energy than is produced by incinerating waste, the amount of energy wasted in the U.S. by not recycling is equal to the output of 15 medium-sized power plants; and

WHEREAS, According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans threw away more than 36 million tons of food in 2012, which the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated is about $165 billion worth of food annually. Even 15% of the food being discarded would be enough to feed 25 million people at a time when one in six Americans does not always have enough to eat; and

WHEREAS, Composting, often described as nature's way of recycling, is the biological process of breaking up of organic waste such as food waste, leaves, grass trimmings, paper, and coffee grounds, etc., into an extremely useful humus-like substance by various micro-organisms including bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes in th...