Project: Cook County Industrial Composting

Project Synopsis:

During the summer of 2022, four undergraduate students from DePaul University (2), Northeastern Illinois University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign worked with Dr. Mark Potosnak as part of the National Science Foundation-funded Metropolitan Chicago Data-science Corps to research food waste disposal for the Cook County Environmental Commission. The Commission wanted an assessment of the amount of food waste that is mixed in with residential and commercial municipal solid waste. After researching previous reports from Cook County, the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois, the students discovered that most estimates of local food waste from both residential and industrial sources (restaurants, hospitals, jails, universities) were based on one study conducted in 2014. The student interns extracted the data from the old report and performed some spatial analyses based on census data from ZIP codes. They found there was a small but statistically significant correlation between average household size and food waste: larger households had less food waste when considered on a per person basis. On the other hand, there was no significant relationship between median income for an area and the percentage of food waste in municipal solid waste. In addition to considering this bottom-up approach to the question, the students also considered top-down techniques based on the number of producing units (households, restaurants, food-service facilities) and survey data. But they found that such studies required extensive surveys and that data was systematically lacking. The students did conclude the county is responsible for a large amount of food waste and that industrial composting programs would provide significant environmental benefits.