This story appears in collaboration with Outlier Media.
For decades, late Saturday afternoons at the Eastern Market were a mess. Around Sheds 2 and 3, discarded and half-rotten produce was piled 10 to 12 feet high.
“Some of it was fit for human consumption and could be taken cheaply or for free,” recalls Jim Sutherland, operations manager of the Eastern Market Partnership, the nonprofit that took over operation of the market from the city in 2006. “But if the vendors couldn’t sell it, they left it and we had to clean it up.”
Some vendors even brought in spoiled produce from outside to take advantage of the “free” garbage disposal. The produce would attract rats and rot until the city came to clean up the mess.
“The city came with a dump truck and a wheel loader, threw the stuff at the building, scooped it up, smeared it everywhere and off they went,” Sutherland said.
Those days are over. Sutherland said it took a few years to retrain the vendors to stop using the market as a dumping ground and instead use dumpsters. In the last 15 years, the place has become much cleaner and more welcoming, he said.
But that doesn’t mean the food waste problem is solved. Program director Brandon Seng estimates that about 500,000 kilograms of food is thrown away through the Eastern Market each year.
“It’s not insignificant,” Seng said.
Seng said the nonprofit is exploring ways to reduce food waste, including large-scale composting and a food rescue initiative.
The cost of food waste
Seng said food waste disposal has become increasingly expensive in recent years.
“It used to cost $25 to get rid of a pallet from the produce terminal, now it’s double that,” he said.
He suspects that this explains why food retailers are becoming more and more brazen when it comes to dumping their food waste at the market.
Sutherland said the change has been noticeable since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“It seems like in the last year or so, maybe two years after the pandemic (the lockdowns), I’m seeing the same mindset, like ‘screw it,’ and you’re seeing a rise again of people … just putting pallets – a watermelon crate, whatever it is – next to the dumpster.”
One success is the ability of fruit and vegetable wholesalers to better predict sales, Seng said. Tom LaGrasso III, president and CEO of LaGrasso Bros., said the fruit and vegetable company has implemented software to better understand fluctuations in demand.
“The goal is to have no (waste) because that costs money,” LaGrasso said. “So the better we get at forecasting and projecting sales, the better our operation will be from a profitability perspective. We get better every year.”
Previous efforts have met with mixed success
But some waste is unavoidable, and the solution is two-part: rescuing food fit for human consumption and processing expired food into soil so it doesn’t end up in a landfill. Before the pandemic, Sutherland said, the market had run pilot projects to address both of these problems, with some success.
“There are actually two things that are at the core of food waste,” he said. “First, the labor costs of collecting and sorting the food are very high. And second … a lot of the products are packaged in one-pound plastic containers. That labor cost and sorting add up to a huge cost.”
In the 2010s, Eastern Market partnered with the nonprofit food rescue organization Forgotten Harvest to collect edible food at the end of market days and distribute it to food banks.
“Forgotten Harvest has been very successful in pulling a significant amount – tens and hundreds of tons – out of the waste stream,” Sutherland said. “It has helped reduce our waste volume and has given retailers a way to avoid having to haul the trash away or hide it somewhere else.”
Sutherland said he could not remember why or exactly when the partnership ended, and Forgotten Harvest did not respond to a request for comment.
A partnership with the nonprofit Detroit Dirt to convert expired fruits and vegetables into compost also had some success. The program provided retailers with 55-gallon containers of expired fruits and vegetables, which Detroit Dirt picked up and transported to its composting facility in southwest Detroit.
Pashon Murray, co-founder of Detroit Dirt, said the program was terminated in 2012 because Eastern Market did not offer a contract or payment for the services, but she is hopeful that could change now that the state and federal governments are placing more emphasis on sustainability.
“With all the funding from the Biden-Harris administration, there are opportunities to increase investment again and activate potential partnerships that existed from the beginning,” she said.
What’s next for Eastern Market’s food waste?
The market management is currently in discussions with Food Rescue US, which has volunteers who collect surplus food and deliver it to food distribution centers.
Sutherland and Darraugh Collins, a site manager for Food Rescue US that has started operations in Detroit, said an initial attempt to launch a program in the Eastern Market in 2022 failed due to difficulties building relationships with suppliers. But they’ve recently had discussions about trying again.
Collins said her organization has picked up excess produce from the Oakland County Farmers Market and the Royal Oak Farmers Market and is in talks with the Downtown Rochester Farmers’ Market. She said they have picked up nearly 200,000 pounds of food from the Oakland County and Royal Oak markets since 2021.
As for composting, Seng is studying the feasibility of installing an anaerobic digester to convert rotted products into compost that can be used for landscaping around the Eastern Market or even sold.
Anaerobic digestion is a process in which bacteria break down organic materials in an airtight container, producing biogas and digestate – a nutrient-rich byproduct that can be used as compost.
Some environmental groups favor aerobic composting because anaerobic digestion produces methane, a greenhouse gas. However, open compost piles can attract vermin and produce foul odors. Seng said the market is also looking at aerobic composting.
Whatever the solution, the main issue is food waste, says Seng.
“The market has identified this as one of our highest priorities in terms of the future sustainability and development of the district,” Seng said. “We need to do something here to ensure we continue to lead, and we believe this is one of the most pressing issues.”
