* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: Councilmember Kraft
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
Title
A Request for Improved Practices for Baltimore City's Environmentally Friendly Food and Beverage Service Businesses
FOR the purpose of requesting Baltimore City's Recycling Program to assist food and beverage service businesses either by organizing them to make collection by private contractors economically feasible or by implementing a more efficient and effective City collection of their recyclables, and by creating a local food waste composting program for them.
Body
Recitals
The recycling program provided by the City of Baltimore is insufficient to reduce the negative ecological and environmental impact that its food and beverage businesses create. Restaurants and bars produce thousands of pounds of glass bottles as waste a month in addition to cardboard, office paper and food wastes. A lot of these recyclable materials are not collected during scheduled collection days because too many recyclables are produced to only be collected every two weeks. This recyclable waste ends up unnecessarily filling landfills or accumulating in alleys or dumpsters, attracting vermin and adding to the City's litter problem.
The food and beverage businesses in Baltimore City would benefit from either of two alternative solutions to this problem. The City should either assist businesses in banding together to make collection by private contractors economically feasible or implement a weekly City collection of its recyclables. Otherwise, recycling will remain a service that many of Baltimore City's corporate and private citizens consider but cannot utilize as fully as they could.
In addition, food wastes generated by food and beverage service businesses may be composted locally. Environmentally-conscious entrepreneurs in Baltimore City are already at work on a business plan to establish a facility that would compost food scraps and provide collection services for schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and other interested businesses. If Baltimore City were to partner with this effort or to create its own program to collect food waste from restaurants and bars and reuse it as locally-created fertilizer and compost for local farmers, parks, and community gardens, the amount of tonnage put into the solid waste stream would dramatically decrease.
Through these environmentally friendly practices for the City's restaurants and bars, the City stands to benefit in many ways. First, the City's spending on hauling and dumping would be lowered. In the same way, the amount of pollutants created in the transport of solid waste, as well as methane gas produced from anaerobic decomposition in landfills, would be drastically reduced. Though methane would be produced through the composting process, such gases could be used to fuel private vehicles hauling food waste to composting sites. Any additional methane, if any, could be sold in the natural gas market or utilized by City fleets and the State public transport system to fuel vehicles retrofitted for use of alternative fuels.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, That the Baltimore City Recycling Program is requested to assist food and beverage service businesses either by organizing them to make collection by private contractors economically feasible or by implementing a more efficient and effective City collection of their recyclables, and by creating a local food waste composting program for them.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be sent to the Mayor and the Legislative Liaison to the Council, the Department of Public Works, the Food and Beverage Association and CitStat.
dlr06-0775~intro/30Mar06
ccres/FoodBev:bh
dlr06-0775~intro/30Mar06
- 2 -
ccres/FoodBev:bh