KANSAS
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT
BILL GRAVES, GOVERNOR
Gary R. Mitchell, Secretary
For Immediate Release Contact: Mike Heideman, 785-296-1529
Restaurant Waste Turned into Compost for Flower/Vegetable Farm
LAWRENCE -- Wine and roses, sure. But how about beer and peonies?
The beer and peonies are connected through composting, a decidedly unromantic venture that nevertheless excites a Lawrence restaurant/micro brewery owner and his neighbor, a vegetable and flower farmer.
Meet Chuck Magerl, the owner of Free State Brewing Co., a micro-brewery and restaurant he's operated for nine years.
"On a personal basis, I'd been composting household materials for 20, 25 years and when I became involved in the food service business, it became a sore point to see how much product is disposed of and carted off to a landfill," Magerl said.
Finding the time and money to devise a more efficient solution to disposing Free State's waste eluded Magerl, until he heard of equipment that would help with half the battle. A pulper-extractor takes refuse, both the byproducts of brewing and the appropriate matter from customer's plates, chops it into quarter-sized bits and presses out its liquids.
The extractor also handles paper napkins, straws and cardboard boxes, shooting the decomposable waste into large garbage-can like buckets. Magerl knew the end product was ideal for adding to compost. But what to do with it?
Enter John Pendleton, a 1979 graduate of Kansas State University. Pendleton brought his animal science degree home to his father's farm in Lawrence. There they had raised cattle, goats and chickens and grew staple Kansas crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans. Then came the farm crisis in the early 80s and what those in industry would call the resulting re-engineering of the family business.
It's now Pendleton's Country Market. Pendleton grows hydroponic tomatoes in a greenhouse, but the farm is better known for its fresh asparagus. His fields lure customers wanting to commune with nature by snapping off the crisp, green twigs. Others, enjoying the drive more than the work, allow the Pendletons to pick it instead.
And, there's the flowers. There's two acres of peonies, kept blooming well past Memorial Day by picking them in just the right bud stage and refrigerating them until they're wanted. There's flowers for creative types to dry and use in crafts and flowers for summer brides to carry on their wedding day.
"Now the only livestock we have on this farm are the barn cats," Pendleton said with a soft chuckle.
A former pit silo that used to hold feed for the cattle has become a giant composting site, Magerl noted as he drove just past his own home and by the farm.
"It was an ideal location," Magerl said. "It had a nice concrete floor so I could back into there, and it was plenty large."
About one quarter of a football field, in fact, Pendleton said. When his neighbor asked if he could contribute the compost additive from the restaurant site, Pendleton agreed.
So, a couple of times a day, Magerl loads up two 50-gallon barrels of his compost additive and trucks it out to Pendleton, dumping it into the pit silo.
Pendleton also accepts grass clippings from a local landscaper and adds his own plant waste, leaves and such. The pit is large enough to keep newer and older materials segregated and he turns either pile with a front-end loader.
"It's added a lot to the tilth, the friability of the soil," Pendleton said.
Magerl, meanwhile, has reduced Free State's waste by 80 percent. It has not translated to an equal savings in money, but that was never the goal.
"There are some significant start-up costs with this," Magerl acknowledged. "But, given the opportunity to see the reduction in waste, you have to keep in mind that the costs of land filling are not likely to decrease."
The effort does require some training of new staff, most of whom embrace it. A couple of times a year, Free State lets customers know it's environmentally conscious.
"It's not a marquis effort," Magerl said. "It, alone, is not enough to keep customers."
He noted that stiff competition and increasingly slim margins for many retailers and food service operators makes them tentative to pursue anything perceived as different or experimental.
Magerl said such efforts are emerging more strongly in densely populated and coastal areas. In Kansas there's not a sense of urgency from a business person's standpoint.
"It's worked well for me," Magerl said. "We've talked about how, once we feel satisfied with our operation, we could expand to get other businesses in town to do the same thing."
Maybe someday the pit will reach what Magerl calls its critical mass, and the compost could actually be sold, too.