 Alright, and so I'm going to start with some housekeeping so as folks come in they can skip the boring stuff. Format of the webinar and timing and all that sort. We are recording this the record button folks joining you'll hear. You'll be alerted that we are recording this as we do with all of our webinars. And it'll be posted on our website, zero waste Arlington dot org which will be putting in the chat for folks who aren't familiar we relaunch that website. Last year and it has just become a real vibrant resource. That's the best part about these events is if you missed it it's okay it's archived and you can check it out. What I'd like to do first is read the land acknowledgement as we do before every public meeting here in the town of Arlington we acknowledge that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony province and Commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. Welcome everyone to our zero waste Arlington our earth to Arlington. Let's talk trash webinar series. The next minute of housekeeping is this will go for one hour we are four minutes in we have 56 minutes to go. As you can see we have three panelists who I'll I'll introduce in just a minute. We're going to walk us through the food waste problem and how we're trying to tackle it a couple of different ways that we can keep food on plates out of landfills. The state is doing to facilitate this not just locally here in Arlington, but across the state, mindful of national trends as well. We will be starting with opening remarks, having a moderated conversation, you can put your questions in the chat. We have a couple of folks behind the scenes, our great webinar team, a small but mighty force that makes sure these things run as smoothly as they can. If you think your question got buried, put it in again. We want to make sure that we get to everything we also do keep a list of questions that come up that we may not have been able to answer. And we can follow up offline again connect with us at zero waste Arlington.org. Now the zero waste committee is a committee of 10 folks opponent appointed by the town moderator, and we meet once per month. Our goal is to educate the public is to help get people the resources they need connect with knowledge, really get as more more involved as they can, they can be in in the town with regards to waste diversion, and having the smallest footprint possible. We meet on the third Thursday of every excuse me the fourth Thursday of every month. We've continued to do a virtual format, although we are discussing now when we can come back in in person. So stay tuned for that. But you can find our meeting schedule on zero waste Arlington.org or the Arlington town website. And come on out and get connected you don't need to be a member of the committee, a working member to join our meetings these are open and accessible to the public. Alright, so looking pretty good on the attendees. I'm going to jump in Sarah. Is that okay. Awesome. Thank you, Priya. And I'm going to stop my virtual background. Nope, I can't so we're going to keep going. This is as I mentioned the fifth webinar in our series earth to Arlington the first one we did was called the cycling IQ the blue bin contamination challenge. Two years and one month ago I can't believe it. We switched to beyond recycling divert more trash and get to zero waste what can we do to keep things out of the landfill we were not talking about organics at that time. Although we did contemplate we would be doing it in the future as we are today, amping up two of the other ours reduced and reuse that's one that we did in November 2021. You know, we know that there's repair in there we touched on that as well. What can we be doing to make sure that our goods are durable, and things don't need to go to the landfill in the first place. And we ended up last fall with new waste bands. What you need to know and this is specifically around some of the changes like the mattress. You can't put mattresses in the curb anymore that came online as part of the solid waste master plan last fall. And so today, we are what we don't eat. And it's all about understanding the food waste problem and I'm going to warn you from the beginning you are going to be probably depressed, probably shocked about some of the data here right. This picture behind me is is not an anomaly and happens all too often we overproduced food like we, we do in many other categories of consumer products in the US. How do we approach the management of excess food and food waste for optimal positive impact and minimal negative impact right. This webinar will look at the big picture. We have our panelists here. I will introduce first, Elise Springle food link director programs and strategy. She leads the food links operations team. If you've seen over there on route to a food link has a wonderful new facility that they renovated that I believe it was an old Napa or it was an old auto parts store I believe wonderful repurposing right off the bike path. She's going to do the work that she's going to describe to us. She developed a curiosity for the environment and food systems growing up on the chest of peak Bay watching oyster boats, bringing in a dwindling harvest. Over the years she's explored the food system from various angles, from working on farms and restaurants to managing snap programs at farmers markets in Indianapolis and Boston, and working for daily table and door Chester, which is expanding a little bit later we're psyched about that. Justin Sandler after that from black earth composting we're psyched Justin that you've joined us. He's been a partner since 2011 back when the company had a one beat up truck and a handful of customers, and he's witnessed the rapidly increasing adoption of food crap, a food scrap diversion compost and mass and Rhode Island, and is looking at expanding we'll talk a little bit about that and I can say, you know, 10 years in the fruits, food scrap collection industry. I, we can't wait to hear Justin some of the changes you've seen and opportunities you see for the future. And finally, John Fisher, bringing it all home for us a deputy division director for solid waste materials management at the of environmental protections is mass DEP. He oversees mass DEP development and implementation of the solid waste master plan which I mentioned earlier will be including a link to that in the chat a little bit later, including the regulatory permitting compliance grant and assistance programs. There's a lot going on john I don't know how you get it all done. And then you make time to come share your knowledge with us thank you for that. We're trying to advance waste reduction recycling composting and mass. And thank you for that so I'm going to stop and I'm going to introduce a lease sprinkle from food link to start us off with the big picture. Thank you Elise. Thank you Scott. And thank you for having me I'm very much looking forward to sharing a little bit more about our work and, and also the big picture on pre if you don't mind putting up my slides. So I'm starting with talking a little bit about what is food waste and what the impact is. So you can go to the next slide. So food waste is a huge problem and a huge contributor to the climate crisis that we are in about 30 to 40% of the food we produce in the US is wasted. So think about your dinner plate and cut it a little bit less than in half and that's all going into the way system. And this is a huge problem when it comes to thinking about the climate crisis. If food goes into incineration like it does in Arlington, I believe it takes more energy to burn it than it would other products because of the high water content. If it goes into a landfill like we're seeing behind Scott before it actually produces methane gas, which is a more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and add this all together and if we were to treat food waste as its own country it would actually be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. So behind the US and behind China, it would be food waste. So if you go to my next slide, the majority of the food that is wasted in the US is actually still edible. So 70 to 90% very high level and food is wasted at every step of our supply chain. So on farms, we're looking at food being wasted because maybe it didn't have a market. Maybe it was grown and it was larger than expected or uglier than expected and so that food is often tilled under into fields at transportation and wholesale levels. So it's again wasted because of market sometimes it doesn't actually have a place to be sold there might be transportation issues, you know if they hit traffic, and it doesn't meet the right window for delivery temperature control issues just misdirected logistics issues there's so many reasons at grocery stores we see a lot of waste because of code dates you know those as best buy sell buy expiration dates. They're not a regulated thing and they're not actually about food safety for the most part they're much more about freshness and companies protecting their brands and stores knowing when to cycle something off the shelf so most food is good well past those expiration dates. That would be a great question for someone to ask you want to learn more about it. I can also send resources after. And then a lot of food is also wasted in our homes. We all have things that go bad in the back of our fridge that we forget about, or we had expectations that we're going to eat healthier. And all of a sudden we've got some oranges that are molding or those those massive portions from a restaurant that you brought part of at home and didn't get to or maybe you left it there because you knew you wouldn't. So it's happening all over the place. And so why do I care about that why does food link care about that if you go on to the next slide I'll tell you a little bit more. So we are an organization we're called we're a food rescue organization and we're working to create a more equitable food system throughout Greater Boston, by rescuing this for distributing high quality, customized food to under resource communities and by advocating for systems change. So we are working to get food that would otherwise be wasted excess food that's still edible and good, and we are distributing it to nonprofits and community organizations throughout Greater Boston that get it to people who are food secure. We're based here in Arlington we've been around for 11 years now. We move about 1.2 million pounds of food a year. If you go on to the next slide I'll tell you a little more. So, part of our work is, obviously our work is about food waste and wasted food and the environment is a major part of why we're doing it, but also so is food and security so in between 2020 and 2021 one in three people in Massachusetts experienced food and security, meaning they did not know where their next meal was coming from. That's a very high number food and security is fun is full food security is fundamental for our well being and food and security has lasting effects on people's lives. If you go on to our next slide. So what we do to remedy this is we're working to connect that excess food to the nonprofits who can get it to the people who need it. We're working with grocery stores wholesalers and farms to get that excess product we work with about 90 different food donors every year and we serve about 90 different recipient agencies. If you go on to the next slide. We are different than a food pantry and you know I think here in Arlington us in Arlington eats are often conflated we do work really closely with Arlington eats they're one of our recipient agencies. We do distribute food to them along with other partners in Arlington like the Arlington Boys and Girls Club, or the Arlington Housing Authority buildings like Chestnut Manor Cusack Terrace and Minotomy Manor. But we're also working with homeless shelters after school programs in low income housing facilities throughout the greater Boston region. And just one more slide I think. So the way we're doing this work we sit on kind of a three a three leg stool. So prioritizing dignity and choice in our work. If you were to go see the food that we were giving out today you'd see that it's really good because frankly there's a lot of really good waste of food in this country. But we're trying to get food that feels dignified to people so sometimes we are composting or sending to animal feed food that is still edible but isn't as appealing to people because we do want people who are food insecure to still have good food. We're also taking that home as volunteers and staff to to eat ourselves so if it's like, you know, we'll get an apple and if it has one Bruce I send it out the door if it has like half of its bruised. Well then so volunteer will probably take home to apples for the price of one or to get one. But we're getting you know 1.2 million pounds of food to people a year and we're prioritizing the things that they need and things that meet their cultural and dietary needs. We are a volunteer based model, we have 11 staff members, but about 250 folks regularly volunteering with us and about 750 folks who come through our door every year to volunteer. So the vast majority of work is done by our volunteers and that's a central part of who we are, because our volunteers also end up changing the ways they eat and think about food by the process of working with us, which is really exciting. And then the third piece that we work on is systems change. This is a new thing for us. We just completed a strategic plan that pointed to the direction of realizing that while our work is really important, it's a band aid in a broken system. So we're looking at ways that we advocate for better systems around food donation about better ways of dealing with food security. So there that's a new thing for us but right now we've been working on the universal school meals campaign here in Massachusetts. So I will turn it back over to you Scott. A wonderful overview you can see me and my hand keeps going off the screen I'm writing down number one a lot of these questions that are coming into my mind I think that would naturally come into our participants who are joining tonight their minds as well but I just wanted to frame that top. Like what's the lead here 40% of the food in the United States is wasted 70 to 90% of that is still edible right. This is, it's embarrassing to think of that and this is just the way that we've set the systems up and the way that our behaviors. You know, everybody makes choices. We can collectively change the choices that we make to make better choices and bend markets and we've seen that in other webinars that we've done that I mentioned earlier that you can still get on our website zero waste Arlington. I think at least we will come back thank you for that great overview and thank you for the work that you do. Justin can we jump to the other side of this right like when there's, when it's an entirely bruised apple when there's nothing else that we can do the apple sauce is going to cut it no smoothies. It's got to go somewhere. How do we keep it out of the landfill. I think you're muted Justin back at it. Thanks for the introduction thanks for having me as well. Black Earth compost we're not the initial place where foods food scraps should go it should go to, you know, ideally human consumption, and then above us is animal consumption, but a lot is going to get through and we are here to collect as much as that as we can. We're a nutrient recycler. We take all the nutrients that are in food scrap. We make compost and that compost is then applied back on to the ground where more food should be grown so currently we we we haul and compost 300 tons of this stuff per week. We've been around since 2011. I've seen it. I've seen not only our company grow but the awareness of food scrap of the importance of food scrap diversion grow as well. I realize I'm no longer really defining what composting is also people are more proactively seeking us out. There's a tremendous amount of ground level support from groups like this other volunteer groups, even students down to, you know, I did a talk with second and third graders about this issue and you know they're asking me they're keeping me on my heels and, you know, asking asking really provoking questions that, you know, I wasn't really introduced to the concept until the business started in 2011. You know, we're doing as much as we can. We're growing throughout the state. We're in Rhode Island. We pick up the 300 tons that and the source of that is is about 32,000 individual residential accounts, but we also pick up. The average is to be about 10 or 11 pounds per pickup per household, and then up to a big producer would be a college or a supermarket but we get everything in between as well. Offices, you know, and all sorts of restaurants. We're reporting live here from our compost site in Manchester by the sea on this warm night and looking out on a field of field of to be screened compost. We are in the midst of peak compost distribution. We are screening a ton of it. The screening is the kind of the last phase to get all the big chunky material out of our compost so we get that nice fine material that we sell at garden centers. People use it in their backyards to grow healthy food and local farmers use it as well and perhaps some of your CSAs are actually grown out of black earth compost. I see some pictures are coming up and that is one of our 33 trucks, I believe to be 34. We have 73 we employ 73 people throughout this is one of our, our ace drivers going I believe based off what the bin looks like that might be done in Rhode Island with the healthy seas healthy soil initiative down in the Newport area. And this is I mean this is just kind of illustrative of how simple composting can be you put the food scrap in a bin and we put it in our truck. You know the magic really happens over the next six months where it's breaking down and being handled well by our team of composters at the sites and nice segue into this is our gotten site. So our site in Manchester is all outdoor composting. This is our kind of 2.0 up in Groton, Massachusetts. It's on city lands, and they allowed us to build that nice building where the first few weeks of composting takes place in a very, very controlled environment and that is how sharp and Chris. We want our compost sites to look. And that is what we're trying to replicate. They're double the small modular compost sites. And we are in the process of building the 3.0 in across town here in Manchester by the sea. As well, it's going to be basically this but just a larger 9000 square foot building, and we are trying to create a replicable model that can be used throughout the state. So we have we currently have three sites, and we're, you know, we want to have these, you know, fairly adjacent to any compost pickup routes that we are doing. And what is this? Oh, so so that and this is this is kind of everything. So we have the pickups are on the right hand side that that 13 gallon cart that we use to pick up residentially behind it is a raised garden bed which we also pre fabricate at our site. And we can, you know, you can go out to work for a day place you order for the raised garden bed and come home and you'll have the raised garden bed in your backyard, filled with our compost 5050 mix. And not only that we, we also team up with a local organic seedling. Organic vegetable company here in Gloucester called Cedar Rock Gardens. And it also comes with, you know, some vegetables or herbs as well. And on the other side is our bag product that we have available to. And here's it looks like iron ox farm up in Hamilton. This is an example of a farmer applying it to what will soon become vegetable rose. We work closely and we have a really strong network of farms that use our product as well. That is our goal is to bring again to recycle the nutrients that are already in our food scrap and put it back on to be a farmland or be it folks backyards. I've been hearing a lot of diversified revenue streams I can imagine this is not an easy business to run to keep going right and to keep growing that really is amazing I wonder that that aerial view. What's the, what's the acreage that that represents number one and what's the sort of, is it tonnage how would you measure industrial composting material. Yeah, I believe I was just trying to get it go over those numbers with with Andrew beforehand, but exactly right. So tonnage per per per week. And I believe that site is 70 Andrew would probably correct me and say it's 75. But I think it's in that realm and I believe it's only two acres. So our model doesn't take up a lot of space. We're flexible in in in how it can be managed within a city. And we have a couple other prospects that we hope to get up and permitted and diverting food scrap. So incredibly efficient two acre spot and this you said is you're allowed to use it by the town of Groton. I think maybe further down I'll ask you a bit more because I want to dig into the business model, but that is really a fascinating stuff and I think you mentioned that Manchester by the sea is going to be an indoor facility is that correct. That's correct just like that photo but a larger building and we also our current site in Manchester and the future one will the properties still owned by Manchester so we we work in conjunction with municipalities. Got it. Fascinating. I think before I go too deep. We're going to round it round it out with John Fisher for master EP. John what does it look like from where you sit. Yeah, thanks and thanks for having me here tonight and just want to compliment you guys on your webinar series really quick had a chance to listen to one of the earlier ones and you do a really good job with it so it's great you're putting these on. I've talked about this all night. So, but I'll make a good effort to be concise. So, you know some of the statistics around food waste are really sobering and kind of troubling but you know there's there's also an opportunity here you know every time we see ways that that's an opportunity for us and with food you know compared to other materials food is probably you know one of the most compelling materials of all to be focusing on because because of the value it holds to us. And so you know the, the good news is that we made a lot of progress here in Massachusetts were among the leaders nationally and our efforts to reduce food waste it's thanks to a lot of organizations like food link and black earth that are operating around this around the state we have about 50 facilities across Massachusetts that take food waste for either composting animal feed or anaerobic digestion we have a really good robust food donation or rescue infrastructure that's really come a long way. In the past 10 years or so especially for fresh and perishable foods that's kind of exciting. And so we started, we've been working on food waste for decades really, but we really tried to pick up our efforts back in 2012 we started working on what was then one of the first disposal bands in the country for large food waste generators so we focus that on businesses and institutions that dispose of one ton or more per week there's about 100,000 of those entities in Massachusetts. We implemented that band along with a really great technical assistance program called recycling works in Massachusetts back in that program started in 2011 the band started in 2014. So, since then we, we went from diverting about 100,000 tons a year of food waste from disposal to about 300,000 tons a year now. So, about 200,000 tons more diversion on an annual basis. When we started with about 1300 businesses separating food waste for composting or an animal feed or anaerobic digestion now we're up to 3500 so we've more than doubled the number of businesses separating food waste. So we did a study, it's been a while it's probably time to redo the study we did it in the wake of the 2014 band, just to kind of look at the economic impact of everything that's going on here because this creates jobs and creates business growth. And at that time and I'm sure we've come a long way since we had about 900 jobs across the fields of food waste collection and composting and food rescue and donation and things like that. So it's generating over 175 million dollars of economic activity on an annual basis, and they're back now there's about $50 million of investment plan across the food waste reduction industry at that time. So, you know, it's not just about reducing our disposal it's not just about capturing this valuable resource we're also, you know, creating these valuable products in the process and creating jobs. You know you talked about our solid waste master plan at the beginning that's what drives what we do from a from a solid waste perspective and there are a lot of reasons why it's really important to reduce our disposal. Even with the progress we've made we still, we still dispose of a little bit north of 900,000 tons of food waste a year on an annual basis. So it's about 21% of our regular household and business trash. So still a lot of obviously a lot of room for improvement. Our emphasis has been to focus on our largest business generators first, that was our 2014 man. We rolled out an expansion to that band that we're really still rolling out in November of 22 that lower demand threshold to a half ton per week roughly double the number of businesses subject. And as we move forward with that our focus will shift to smaller businesses and to getting more residential food waste separation going, you know, starting with the largest generators first made a lot of sense to us that's where the programs are the most cost effective. It's also where we have the smallest number of businesses we can work with to try to really ensure quality feedstocks that are being separated and delivered to facilities which is really important. So we're continuing our approach, and you know we're making good progress we're continuing to prioritize efforts on food waste at the state level. And working, you know, working really hard rolling out grant and assistance programs as we go trying to build our education and outreach, and, you know, trying to take advantage of all these opportunities that we see in a way stream. And so it's, it's exciting, it's exciting here, at least talk and hear Justin about how Black Earth has has grown and expanded their facilities over the year. That's, you know, exactly the kind of thing we're looking for and that's, you know, it's work like that that's going to ultimately make these efforts successful in the years ahead so I will stop there and try to try to save your time for discussion and Q&A. And I thank you for that I mean let's just put it in perspective you said 900,000 tons annually of food is still going into landfills and we'll juxtapose that with Elise mentioned that the small but mighty food link recovers 1.2 million pounds right and so this is like really you mentioned 250 groups to do that sort of recovery statewide. How many more do you need like what scale are they at and how how are we able how's the state thinking about to its grant assistance programs for example to sort of amp that up. Yeah, so, you know, we have a good infrastructure right now. And, you know, we feel confident we can absorb the material at least that's subject to our food waste disposal ban right now. So we feel good about the infrastructure we have we feel like there's room for growth, but as we go we feel like we need more locally distributed compost capacity. I think that's really important. I still think there's lots of opportunities for food rescue and donation to grow. I think the last numbers I looked at. I may not have this exactly right but over the state we're doing in the neighborhood of somewhere. I'll use a range could be more likely to be accurate. So we have to 30,000 tons a year across all our food rescue and donation organizations food banks and things like that but you know there's there's more room there and the one thing we haven't talked about and I just want to kind of put a something out there about this is is one of the other stats that I find fascinating is that the average family of four waste about $1500 a year on food that they throw out. I find that stat also compelling is the, you know 30 to 40% of all food gets wasted you know when you think about each family for or you know it's basically per person so you think about a couple. You know wasting $750 a year on food that's being thrown in the trash. To me that's pretty compelling number and we are I think each have opportunities are in our own home to just be more efficient with the food we're buying and preparing. And our businesses have that opportunity as well we've seen a lot of businesses implement systems to track food waste. And of course of doing so we're able to reduce their food waste by 50% and more that's not even composting that's not donation just right in their kitchen getting a 50% reduction in food waste so you know when we think about how are we going to get these 900,000 tons or so and we're not going to get 900,000 but we want to get a lot of it. And, you know, it's going to come from from all of these strategies across both, you know, the commercial and the residential sectors. No, no truth you remind me of home economics classes yeah I'm old enough to remember we had to take those that we shop and then home act, and you learn how to be as efficient as you possibly can be, and doing that at the state level for restaurants and such it's fascinating to hear. I just want to stay with you for one more question because you know here I am, you know, asking what is the state doing for small business what is the state doing to cover its own, where the feds and all this are their federal programs to support you and your work. Yeah, and they're they're they're ramping up. EPA's funding has has been increasing over over the past couple years and they're rolling out more more grant programs around food waste also really important role for EPA is to is to provide information and do research, and they're doing more and more of that and putting more reports as actually on a call with someone from EPA this morning talking about a lot of the work they're rolling out so they're rolling out more grant assistance programs they have a great program called EPA is too good to waste program that provides a lot of resources on food waste reduction that's pretty, pretty interesting program which has some great resources that people can use so they're doing more. But there's also in the Northeast. You know, Massachusetts has been a leader but Connecticut, Vermont have been leaders New Jersey and New York are following them with bands now Rhode Island as well. New Hampshire which is not typically a band sort of state but New Hampshire is thinking about a food waste ban as well. There's a lot of movement in the Northeast and it's kind of exciting to see, you know, everything that's happening I was on a call with my counterparts from other Northeast states this morning, and there's, there's a lot of good work going on. Now it sounds like it and Justin I want to jump back to you if you don't mind because Groton is stuck in my head. I wouldn't give away something for free, unless they thought there was real value there so you know when when Groton thinks about citing a processing plant like your you've built there. What, what are they excited about most. Yeah, good, really good point it's the same in Manchester by the sea the same sort of exchange of labor for land so we take over and run what was the yard waste site. So, you know here, I'll use Manchester I'm here but it's the same for Groton residents are still coming up with their brush. And instead of it just being a brush compost, which also you know technically is compost. They allow us, you know we take over the management of all that material, which is a lot of management you have to grind it which is very laborious and expensive. It's this massive dystopian grinding machine that is pretty incredible to rent out. So we, you know, take on that cost, we have our loaders pushing up rush, we process, you know, anything from Christmas trees to leaves, and that's the exchange they allow us to incorporate our food scrap into that. And, but the foot that another benefit the town gets is that instead of free yard waste compost for the residents, they get free black earth compost, which is can do a sales pitch on that right now but it's it we, it's a top quality food scrap compost. We have, we do extensive testing on it, heavy metals, and etc we have all the lab results right on our site, and the towns in which we operate in with our site have access to that material as well. Well, yeah, and so you talked about the heavy equipment right like 73 employees what what's like the range of jobs like what are you what are the folks working for you do. And it's really from managing. So our business I guess is kind of twofold it's the pickups and it could be thought of as two separate but it's very synergistic. We have the trucking that does all the pickups. So we have a number of rail drivers route managers and extensive customer support group. You know, you have 32,000 people asking you questions. We want to be able to answer them or it will get either contaminated compost or just even more headaches and so that's that's kind of the trucking but then you have to have fleet manager and you're there's a lot of machines to be repairing so we have a group of really skilled mechanics and we were always forward thinking and thinking about design other other, you know, niche pieces of machinery that otherwise might cost us a million bucks that we have fabricators that are coming up with designs, always tweaking always working. But then the intake of the material we have loaders and operators and site managers and then we have, you know, event outreach people. It's an extensive network and honestly props to our incredible team. Top to bottom. It's it's it we're super tight knit gritty creative group and super proud of, you know, what we built and the whole squad. No, it's great and so you think about fleet management, at least I know you don't actually maintain a fleet of vehicles but you do maintain a vast network of volunteers as you mentioned I think 250 core volunteers that are actually doing the moving around picking up and dropping off food, very logistically intense. You handle all of that I mean at the end of the day it's it's a great mission, but what you're both doing is intensely like meticulous you got to get it right and dirty work right. Yeah, so we actually do maintain a fleet of vehicles we have four food length vehicles three of which are refrigerated. So three, three vans and one box truck to safely move the food since we are heavily working with perishable foods. It's an important part of our food safety. And during the pandemic, we really increase the amount of perishable food we are getting and we're getting it from further away than we used to so we had to increase our refrigeration fleet, but you're right that the majority of our food actually still moves with volunteer vehicles. And, you know, we're actually working on some new solutions for our logistics for about we're literally actually this week in the process of working on finalizing a Salesforce database that's going to help us with our logistics. But for the most part we've been doing it with spreadsheets and a lot of, you know, we burn through cell phones fairly regularly as a result of it, as well as just making a lot of phone calls but it's our it's our staff that does that so we have a logistics manager and a volunteer coordinator, and a number of operation staff who kind of keep things smoothly running of making sure that things get from point A to point B. And I didn't ask you at the very beginning what's your geographic footprint. Are you town based are you sort of based on what's easy to get to via, you know, main arteries like how do you guys map out what you what you recover. So we started here in Arlington and, you know, if you look at kind of our regular distribution, it's Arlington Medford Lexington Maldon Somerville Cambridge is kind of our big like our major service area, but we serve greater Boston so we have go as far north as Lawrence and Lowell and as far south as North Adelborough actually, but most of our things are kind of centered in that close ring around where we are. Most of our pickups are within there. And we have tried to keep the distributions close by we have a number of distributions or agencies that come pick up from us if we're not able to get out to them. But we do, we try to group things together so you know we've recently increased some of the work we're doing down in Dorchester and Roxbury because we had a couple agencies and a few more are interested so we, we've grouped those things together. But most of the what we do is probably within five to 10 miles of our hub it over on summer street. It's been seen for both operations both food link and black earth that there's probably an opportunistic sort of angle here right like if someone asks you or if there's a ton of food in this area you might consider standing up a new operations hub in your case Justin or serving a new area in your case like that's organic growth right that sort of meeting things as they come up and and john at the state level I wonder what is the map look like to you do you do you know sort of okay I've got good food distribution. I've got great composting over here but like how do you look at it from from 20,000 feet. Yeah so there's a question that came up in the chat that I can maybe address in this context to about the role of anaerobic digestion so we have a lot of anaerobic digestion facilities, most of which are based on dairy farms and they co digest manure with food waste. We have a lot of anaerobic digestion facilities overall, but most of those are in either the central or western part of the state. And so, as we can, and when you look at a map of food waste generation patterns, more of the food waste is in the eastern part of the state as you might expect because we more population and more businesses in the eastern part of the state so as we look ahead. And the, you know, one of the ways our capacity will need to evolve and shift a little bit is to develop more capacity in the eastern part of the state which could either, you know be more in orbit digestion more composting, or the other way to develop is these intermediate processing facilities that kind of serve as transfer operations for food waste where they'll take food waste and load it up and then put it into a larger transfer vehicle and deliver it to a site and another part of the state so between those those different approaches, I think we're going to see the infrastructure continue to evolve to meet, you know, to meet the generation that's going on, you know, certainly not exclusively there's a lot of food waste all over Massachusetts but, you know, a greater percentage of it is in the eastern third of the state. Great, thanks for that context and I think you know in our pre call when we sort of were catching up around some of the big themes, you'd mentioned that a lot of food waste exits the state, because there is no capacity for it and it goes as far as the Midwest you're saying. Yeah, so that would be in the food waste that's going into our trash. So, you know that 900,000 tons or so a year, when you look at our, when you look at our trash we dispose of when it putting aside construction material that's kind of a separate category. We dispose of around between around 4.4 million, say 4 million tons a year municipal solid waste that's a regular household and business trash. And in state and then they're probably about another million tons or so a year out of state and a lot of the waste that's going out of state is going pretty far by by rail hall as far as Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, places like that, which is not where we want to see our trash going we want to be, you know, managing the material more effectively locally producing less trash and, you know, having in the case of food waste having it go to operations like Justin's and even before that places like, you know, with, like Lisa food link where we can capture the value of this material in state. Yeah, and obviously the, the, if it ends up in a landfill that's really bad from a greenhouse gas perspective if it's releasing methane and such. But it's also if you're going to transport it to another state to release it there, then you have all that transport cost and greenhouse gas associated with that it really is sort of a depressing picture. You mentioned that there's you've identified that there's about, I guess a fifth right about 21% of the solid waste that goes into landfills is food scraps how do you tell I mean is this pitchforks and, and algorithms or how are you able to know that. Yeah, so that's based on waste characterization that studies that are done at a number of our facilities it's our, our large waste combustors in particular that have a requirement to conduct those studies every three years so we have where are we now 2020 the last ones were held last year so I think we're 2019. I think we have 15 years of those studies now, five, five sets of them three years apart, and they have a methodology for doing, there's actually like an ASTM methodology for doing this. It looks like a statistically valid way of sampling waste they do a certain number of certain size samples across the way stream. And, you know, come up with this calculation that's kind of what they call a waste character waste characterization it's a week based way characterization so they do all these samples so it is literally, you know the sample to sort out every spec of that sample they have a different, they have like 60 different bands or 62 I think different bands that they sorted into and weigh all of it, and then characterize that across the way stream so it's pretty, it's pretty good robust. You know, big picture pretty accurate data. And so we feel like we have pretty good handle on on our waste waste, you know characterization based on those reports and that data. And I think it's the weight and probably moisture content and all of that I mean that that matters right food scraps in in a trash bin are heavy and and Justin I think you know there's got to be a knock on effect if you're picking up for municipality for example doing curbside pickup. That is a huge amount of weight that's being diverted to the landfill right there tipping fees and cities have to pay to get that stuff done so do you have a sense of how much that might save a municipality to institute a program like this. It varies on participation, but every account that signs up with us is reducing that tonnage by 10 pounds every week. But I don't, I have access to that somewhere. You hear noise in the background we actually have a truck dumping right now. But that it's that's it's a huge incentive for towns to get involved is, you know, to lower that total tipping fee, which is only going it's high already. And it's only going up, we have, you know, with landfills set to shut down in the next few years. And you want to take the heaviest portion of that track of that what is currently being trashed. I always air away from saying food scrap is trash if it's bring composted. But really the more the more a town adopts it the more they're going to save on that trash feed. It's awesome there's so many ways to look at this like we obviously don't want the waste and we don't want the greenhouse gas. We don't want the money waste we don't want all the bad stuff but there's a lot of good here. And I think we'll talk about that but just before the end but I want to get to a few questions and at least this one's for you asking sort of where you're recovering food from and someone asked if there's do you go to like market basket for example, is it restaurants I would imagine restaurants have a lot more prepared food but they could have maybe an extra bushel of something like what are your main sources. Yeah, so our main sources are grocery stores. We have partnerships with a number of Trader Joe's Whole Foods and stop and shops, as well as in smaller places. We don't currently work with market basket I do think that they're donating some of their product to the greater Boston food bank, but I'm not as familiar with their program. We also work with wholesalers and a couple of local farms, our farm work is much more around collecting access from farmers markets are from CSA is as opposed to gleaning the boss area cleaners which I'm sure a number of people are familiar with do cleaning throughout the state. They do it really well and we actually receive some of their access periodically if their truck has come in tomorrow to give us some stuff before the long weekend. So we work with a number of other organizations to to kind of collaborate in that way, but grocery stores is our main part wholesalers are also really interesting we've been working with some produce vendors at the New England produce market for a long time. And we do periodic pickups from various places like Little Leaf lettuce has been a recent donor. As they were getting their new greenhouse up and running and kind of building their market locally for that new greenhouse we were getting some big truckloads from them about once a week for a little bit. Okay, so a diversified stream of source is awesome. Wonderful so I did see that there's some questions in the Q amp a please everybody put him in the chat I'm sorry we're not able to monitor both, but I did see one of the Q amp a Justin this occurred to me as well. I'm probably not getting a lot of like utensils and containers that say compostable on them but may or may not be to the level that you need like how is that a big problem in terms of the quality of what you're taking in. Yes, it's a, but it's it's trending for the better. I'm very optimistic about the overall adoption of compostable plastics bowls etc. But the label like ruling around labeling has to catch up to that. There's a lot of confusion of, you know, the word come compost is unfortunately a loosely defined word, especially if you're trying to sell a product. So we have a set of certifications that we accept BPI, CMA and TV. Those all ensure the full compost ability within 180 days at our commercial facility, but it also man it also tests for levels of forever chemicals, the PFAS group of chemicals that may be present otherwise. And that's yeah sorry that's a whole other you're seeing an uptick in that I mean it's all over the news in terms of the levels that that are being measured just across. I'm happy to come this this came up tonight but it is certainly worth it you know another session on where our levels are trending very far much downward and we test it specifically because we take that issue extremely seriously. We're well below the stress threshold and it is continuing to decline the more that we clamp down on our feedstock and the more awareness we spread about what proper materials that we can and can accept. Awesome. Thank you and I there's actually a black earth customer in put a something in the chat talking about your yay and nay list things that you will accept and things that you won't accept and they're confident that they're doing the right thing but what do you do like if there's if there's a nay product in there. I always appreciate when people are looking into it and instead of just guessing and hoping for the best there's a the wish for wish cycling translates to composting as well. Most coffee cups are not compostable just for out there. But what so what do we do we educate initially the restaurant for example or the resident will take a photo that photo will be sent to you. This is not compostable. We do manual extraction that's a technical term for the driver hopefully picks it out and puts it in the trash. If it makes it in the truck it's trickier and trickier to remove it. We have a big screener that hopefully you know room removes 90% and then we have a vacuum on the conveyor belt removes 5% and a blower 5% and we do the best we can but a fruit stickers seem to be rather evasive for us but we do our best. Prevention is key. Absolutely prevention is key don't produce excess food in the first place and keep keep the stuff out if it has to go in. Oh thank you Sarah from our webinar team put in your what's compostable page link in there and so you know. One thing we touched on briefly in the introduction Elise because I know we're down about two and a half minutes left so any last minute questions throw them in here if we weren't able to address them tonight our team will follow up. We talked about the daily table right there's there's entire businesses and I believe they just opened their fifth location right there and or about to open their fifth and central square mattapan Dorchester. Thank you Sarah for that daily table link, and you know they're recovering food that might not be it's the ugly fruit right it's the stuff that's perfectly fine to eat and just might not be appealing for a boutique grocery store right but still deserves to be on a plate for a good meal. And we have a local option doing the same thing neighborhood produce which now has two locations here in Somerville and so there's more of this out there. Check it out. And I do just want to say sort of on the legislative side, and the sort of at the state level city and state level the city of Boston about a month ago. Two counselors banded together they've been studying food waste for about a year and a half and food insecurity, and saying this is a problem, how do we keep this food here, and have sponsored a city ordinance that is working its way through the council now. And there's two dozen bills at least dealing with waste and at least three or four of those are dealing with food waste specifically in the current legislative session. And so come out to our zero waste Arlington meetings we're talking about all that stuff we're getting involved. We want to know what you care about, and we can be your advocates up in the hill. And it looks like we're about a minute. I'd like to get closing comments from anybody who would like to to offer any we're so grateful that you've come to give your, your expertise tonight and share your time with us and feel free to just jump in. I would just say real quick that you know I know we didn't get to all the questions so if you guys want to follow up with me on any of the questions that relate to me afterwards happy to talk further and get people answers about those. I'm more and more, more and more optimistic about for, you know, being in Massachusetts and having legislature and groups like this behind our mission. We're getting there it's a little hairy right now but we're certainly on the right path. I'll just add that I think you know the exciting thing to me about food waste is that it's a doable solution. You know this is something that we can affect change in our own lives on and we do need legislative and big systems changes to like make it lasting but it's something you can be talking to your neighbors about you can be changing the way to eat. I was really excited this evening to go through the participant list and see so many food link volunteers on here. So there's plenty of ways to get involved, whether you volunteer with us or get a subscription with black earth it's something you can do something about which is not always the case when it comes to issues around our climate. And our collective action will move markets, be the change lead by example thank you all so much for coming. I'll follow up with everybody with a few sub thank yous after this but I would like to give you the rest of your evening back. Thank you to all of our panelists just reminder we are meeting a week from tonight is the next zero waste Arlington committee meeting and zero waste Arlington.org you can find all of our resources that we talked about before it's a great website I want to thank our website team who's just rocking it right now so thank you all have a great night enjoy the unseasonable weather.