Collection of Information on Anaerobic Digestion Facilities Processing Wasted Food to Support EPAs Sustainable Food Management Programs (Revision)

EPAs Sustainable Food Management (SFM) Program promotes the sustainable management of food which is a systematic approach that seeks to reduce wasted food and its associated impacts over its entire lifecycle. The lifecycle of food includes use of natural resources, manufacturing, sales, and consumption and ends with decisions on recovery or final disposal. Diversion of food waste from landfills is a critical component of this effort. In order to effectively divert food waste from landfills, sufficient capacity to process the diverted materials is required. Knowledge of organics recycling capacity is needed to facilitate food waste diversion and anaerobic digestion facilities provide a significant amount of the needed capacity. EPAs food recovery hierarchy prioritizes potential actions to prevent and divert wasted food. According to the hierarchy, processing wasted food via anaerobic digestion is a more desirable option than landfilling or incineration because it creates more benefits for the environment, society and the economy. Anaerobic digestion of food waste and other organic materials generates renewable energy, reduces methane emissions to the atmosphere, and provides opportunities to improve soil health through the production of soil amendments. The SFM program supports these efforts by educating state and local governments and communities about the benefits of wasted food diversion. The SFM program also builds partnerships with state agencies and other strategic partners interested in developing organics recycling capacity and provides tools to assist organizations in developing anaerobic digestion (AD) projects. The nationwide collection of data about AD facilities processing food waste began in 2017 with a survey of all known AD facilities under the currently approved Information Collection Request (ICR). EPA published the first annual report of findings based on this data in July 2018. EPA is now renewing the ICR in order to continue to monitor growth and evaluate trends in the capacity for processing of food waste and the amount of food waste being processed via AD in the United States. Data will be collected using electronic surveys that will be distributed to respondents by email and will be available on EPAs AD website. Participation in this data collection effort is voluntary. Respondents are not required to reveal confidential business information.

The latest form for Collection of Information on Anaerobic Digestion Facilities Processing Wasted Food to Support EPAs Sustainable Food Management Programs (Revision) expires 2021-01-31 and can be found here.