(Photo courtesy of The Environmental Center)
Imagine eating at a food cart lot on a crisp fall day. Once you’re done and you get up to leave, what do you see yourself doing? At almost every location in Central Oregon, it’s likely returning any glass pint glasses or steel food trays (if you’re lucky), and throwing away the rest of the single-use foodware in large garbage cans. Maybe even at a self-titled, centrally located “Trash Island.” According to Upstream Solutions, we use more than a trillion disposable food service products in the United States each year. Finding a trillion hard to fathom? Imagine the weight equivalent of five million Subarus each year. This not only has significant environmental impacts but also costs Deschutes County residents and businesses around $1 million to manage.
From local research, we’ve learned that a single lot can produce nine cubic yards of waste per week — a full dump truck’s worth. Across the 13 food cart lots just in Bend, that adds up to 12 full garbage trucks of single-use waste a week from food carts alone. That’s not even including the containers discarded at home, or the hundreds of other restaurants and food establishments in the area. All of this has to be transported to Knott landfill (expected to be full by 2029) and releases harmful emissions all along the way, or worse, ends up becoming a majority of all litter.
In addition to these visible downstream impacts, research shows that for every pound of waste that goes into our curbside bin, 30 to 70 times that amount is created upstream, using precious natural resources and leaving a trail of harm to our planet and its people. The greatest impacts of which are often borne by developing countries and communities of color, low-income populations, and other groups facing historical and structural inequities.
Reuse Deschutes, an initiative of the Rethink Waste Project of The Environmental Center with grant funding from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, aims to change this. Following in the footsteps of other successful programs in our state like Rogue To Go and Benton To Go, we are excited to create a reusable take-out container program that makes it easy for businesses and individuals to make the switch to reusables. Then, we plan to pilot reusables for on-site dining at a food cart lot — addressing waste at a unique and beloved part of Central Oregon’s food service scene.
Through these two pieces, we’re excited to start the process of rethinking our relationship with materials and waste every time we eat out — for businesses, residents, and visitors alike.
Here are a few reasons we’re excited for this project:
- 🗑️ Save 10,000 single use containers PLUS one dump truck per week
- 🥡 Eliminate PFAS, micro-plastics, and contaminants from our food
- 💰 Businesses save on container cost w/ each meal
- ✊🏽 Collections & dishwashing – keeps resources within the community
- 🌲 Keep litter and microplastics out of our parks, forests, and waterways
- ✈️ Model sustainability as a visitor destination
- ⚡Changes systems to help shift culture
We are also grateful to have the support of key partners on this project:
“Shifting to reusables in the food service sector provides a waste reduction benefit and also encourages behavior change and improves awareness about waste prevention to a broad swath of our community. This culture change has rippling impacts toward greater waste reduction behavior across the community, which will help the City meet its climate action goals.” ~ Cassie Lacy, Senior Management Analyst, City of Bend
“Deschutes County is committed to waste prevention programs and recognizes the significant impact the Reuse Deschutes pilot project can have. We have an on-going partnership with The Environmental Center for waste prevention and waste reduction programs and know this pilot project presents a tremendous opportunity to reduce single-use waste in the foodservice sector.” ~ Tim Brownell, Director of Department of Solid Waste, Deschutes County
So how can you help?
If you are a food service business and are interested in saving money and reducing the waste you generate, we’d love to hear from you. Please see envirocenter.org/DISH or email kavi@envirocenter.org. We’re seeking input from all businesses so we can create a program that serves our community best. If you’re interested in being involved as an individual or business sponsor, let’s connect.
The Rethink Waste Project is a program of The Environmental Center that envisions a community that understands the upstream and downstream impacts of using Earth’s resources and makes responsible decisions about the consumption, use, and disposal of materials.
Through education, resources, and engagement activities, our goal is to empower Deschutes County residents, visitors, and businesses to prevent waste and then recover as much as possible. You can learn more about our work and all the resources and services we offer at RethinkWasteProject.org.
