Recent Clinton School Graduate Read Admire to Launch New Urban Composting Project

Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas Clin­ton School of Pub­lic Ser­vice alum, Read Admire, is launch­ing The Urban Food Loop, a new Lit­tle Rock-based startup focused on reduc­ing res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial food waste through a weekly urban com­post­ing ser­vice, edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives, and pol­icy advo­cacy. The Urban Food Loop kicks off at Heifer Inter­na­tional on May 30th.

The Urban Food Loop’s i-Compost! Ser­vice will recover local food waste by offer­ing Lit­tle Rock res­i­dents a home com­post­ing bin in exchange for a monthly fee. Res­i­dents toss food scraps and left­overs into their i-Compost! bin weekly. The Urban Food Loop team will exchange full bins with clean ones and com­post the food waste.

Accord­ing to the Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil, Amer­i­cans are throw­ing away the equiv­a­lent of $168 bil­lion each year by wast­ing 40% of food pro­duced for human con­sump­tion. That trans­lates to 34 mil­lion tons or 680 bil­lion pounds of food wasted annu­ally in the U.S. Every pound of food waste results in 3.8 pounds of green­house gas emis­sions, and less than 3% of national food waste is recov­ered or composted.

In response these issues, the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly recently declared 2015 the Inter­na­tional Year of Soils. The IYS aims to be a plat­form for rais­ing aware­ness of the impor­tance of soils for food secu­rity and essen­tial eco-system func­tions. Chris Hiryak, founder of the South­ern Cen­ter for Agroe­col­ogy and direc­tor of Lit­tle Rock Urban Farm­ing believes that, “Access to high qual­ity mature com­post (sta­ble humus) is key to the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of our food sys­tem.” Food waste is a valu­able nat­ural resource per­fect for mak­ing sta­ble humus.

By par­tic­i­pat­ing in The Urban Food Loop’s i-Comoost! Ser­vice, cus­tomers earn com­post, which can be requested for drop off at their home gar­dens or donated, to com­mu­nity part­ners like Lit­tle Rock Urban Farm­ing or The Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance Glean­ing Gar­den. Last year the Glean­ing Gar­den grew and har­vested over 8,000 lbs. of fresh local pro­duce at West­ern Hills Park, all of which was donated to local food pantries in efforts to fight food inse­cu­rity in cen­tral Arkansas.

The Urban Food Loop is kick­ing off its urban com­post­ing ser­vices by ensur­ing Heifer International’s Feast in the Field is a zero waste event. This unique farm-to-fork gath­er­ing cel­e­brates build­ing local economies, fam­ily farm­ing around the world, and raises funds to ben­e­fit Heifer projects in the United States. The Urban Food Loop will com­post all food waste cre­ated at the event. “You can help close the food loop by com­post­ing your food waste into locally made fer­til­izer for local grow­ers while also fight­ing cli­mate change and food inse­cu­rity,” Admire said. Indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses can sign up to com­post food waste at TheUrbanFoodLoop.com

About The Urban Food Loop

The mis­sion of The Urban Food Loop is to advance local food cul­ture by mak­ing com­mu­ni­ties com­postable. The Urban Food Loop engages and edu­cates cit­i­zens about local and sus­tain­able food sys­tems while advo­cat­ing for sound pub­lic poli­cies that fos­ter account­able and respon­sive insti­tu­tions. The Urban Food Loop offers cen­tral Arkansas res­i­dents and busi­nesses urban-composting ser­vices as well as com­mu­nity food sys­tems edu­ca­tion programs.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.theurbanfoodloop.com or fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, and Instagram.

About Heifer International

Heifer International’s mis­sion is to end hunger and poverty while car­ing for the Earth. For 70 years, Heifer Inter­na­tional has pro­vided live­stock and envi­ron­men­tally sound agri­cul­tural train­ing to improve the lives of those who strug­gle daily for reli­able sources of food and income. Heifer is cur­rently work­ing in more than 30 coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, to help fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties become more self-reliant.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.heifer.org, read our blog, fol­low us on Face­bookor Twit­ter, or call 1–888-5HUNGER (888–548-6437). For more infor­ma­tion about Beyond Hunger: Feast in the Field 2015, visit http://www.heifer.org/beyond-hunger/feast-in-the-field.html