RACINE, WI – InSinkErator recently partnered with Rock the Green, a new environmentally friendly music festival hosted in Milwaukee, WI, on September 18. The festival, presented by Veolia Environmental Services, seamlessly merged entertainment with an interactive sustainability experience, spotlighting innovative green practices and technologies, such as InSinkErator’s food waste disposers. Headlined by artists including The Fray, Ben Folds and Michelle Branch, the festival organizers and their partners implemented sustainable waste management methods that allowed for 92 percent of the waste generated at the event to be reduced, reused or recycled.
Leading the sustainability charge in food waste management, InSinkErator provided four commercial disposers for use at the festival. Rock the Green created a total of 1,200 pounds of food waste, which InSinkErator’s disposers ground and placed in containers that were delivered to the local wastewater treatment plant to be converted to renewable energy and fertilizer.
In order to make recycling easy for the more than 7,000 attendees, Veolia Environmental Services set up special bins throughout the venue for food waste, as well as other bins for compostables, recycling and trash. The food waste bins were then taken to four garbage disposal stations with stainless steel sink disposer units, specially designed by InSinkErator. After the scraps went through the disposer stations, the food matter was sent to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), where it was converted to an organic fertilizer called Milorganite, a byproduct of MMSD. The Milorganite will be returned to Veterans Park, the concert venue, completing a recycling process never before implemented at a music festival.
"Rock the Green presented the unique opportunity to showcase the variety of ways businesses are committed to sustainability," said Lindsay Stevens Gardner, Founder and Executive Director, Rock the Green. "We were fortunate to partner with companies like InSinkErator to make a lasting impact on our community and parks. Our ability to remove waste from the environment at this level was helped tremendously by InSinkErator's commitment to a comprehensive waste reclamation solution."
“We were proud to partner with Rock the Green and help deliver a sustainable solution for food waste management to the festival and its attendees,” noted Bill Sobanski, InSinkErator’s General Manager of Foodservice Products. “Whether we are working with a local concert or a large commercial foodservice operator, our goal is to always provide solutions that reduce their impact on their environment and their businesses’ bottom-line.”
Why “Rock the Green” Chose to Use a Food Waste Disposer
More than19 million tons of food waste is sent to landfills each year, and approximately 50 percent of this waste comes from foodservice operations. As environmental sustainability becomes more of a concern, foodservice operators need to find better ways to conserve resources and reduce their carbon footprint. An ideal way to support the environment and reduce global warming is to use food waste disposal systems.
Food waste disposers can keep waste from decomposing in landfills, which is a major cause of global warming. Buried waste is the number one source of human-caused methane emissions, and food waste is the most harmful type of buried waste because it decomposes faster and produces harmful bacteria that can contaminate the earth and our water supply. Food disposers remove this threat and keep food waste out of landfills.
With millions of tons of food waste produced by the foodservice industry each year, it’s important to find sustainable, simple solutions for waste management. By partnering with Rock the Green, InSinkErator not only helped to convert 1,200 pounds of food waste into renewable energy and fertilizer, but also educated attendees about today’s eco-friendly options for food waste management.
Headquartered in Racine, Wis., InSinkErator, a division of Emerson, is the world’s largest manufacturer of food waste disposers and hot water dispensers.
Source: InSinkErator
