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A rendering of the Organic Materia Cycle model. Photo courtesy of the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation.
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Solana Center challenges EPA’s food waste model

ENCINITAS — Solana Center for Environmental Innovation, an environmental nonprofit that has been providing waste diversion and environmental education in San Diego County since 1983, has created a new closed-loop food waste management model. 

The Organic Material Cycle model depicts the circularity inherent in nature as applied to food waste and highlights how landfill diversion of food waste is possible and beneficial. 

In 2023, the U.S. EPA published a report on food waste reduction and disposal, “From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Management Pathways,” and introduced a new framework for managing surplus food. The report analyzes the less beneficial methods of handling food surpluses – from feeding people to animals to composting and anaerobic digestion – and builds on the previous food hierarchy, incorporating new avenues for excess produce like upcycling, leaving unharvested and applying directly to land. 

“At core, the EPA Model is linear and misses the mark,” according to Jessica Toth, creator of the Organic Material Cycle Model and executive director of Solana Center. 

Inspired by nature’s intrinsic regenerative forces, Toth believes food waste should be depicted and taught as a circular process with no off-ramps leading to a landfill.

For decades, Solana Center has driven changes to state and regional perceptions of the environmental damage of landfilled organic material with demonstrated examples of closed-loop food systems. 

In 2016, Solana Center received California’s highest environmental honor for spotlighting for the first time the contribution of food waste to greenhouse gas emissions and piloting community-based and regional circular systems. Shortly afterward, California passed the country’s most far-reaching legislation to eliminate landfilled organic material due to its global warming impact. 

In 2023, San Diego County updated its Organic Materials Ordinance to allow region-wide self-management of food waste, as proven by Solana Center’s operational models. Further, countless local cities relaxed their ordinances to encourage onsite composting, as demonstrated and taught by Solana Center.

Celebrating Solana Center’s 40th year, Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) showcased Solana Center’s vision statement: a world with landfills and oceans free of discarded resources.  

“We should not have systems that are one-way,” Blakespear said regarding landfills.

Following publication in “BioCycle,” the model received enthusiastic comments and feedback from across the country, including from academics at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and the University of Maine as well as national commentators.

Since 2013, one of Solana Center’s goals has been to increase the adoption of closed-loop organic material thinking by individuals, businesses, schools and local governments to prevent organic materials from being dumped in the landfill. Solana Center’s headquarters and its many projects seeded throughout San Diego County demonstrate and assess the reality of the concepts conveyed in the model. 

“This new way of looking at the food system has the potential to be taught in elementary schools, used in college courses, and consulted for policymaking,” Toth said. “It was designed to be adaptable as new technologies and considerations come along. The essence of closed-loop thinking will always be at the core.”

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