Doing what's never been done

As those tons of food waste decompose, they release greenhouse gases that experts say are 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. These and other components harm the environment, negatively affect human health, and contribute to growing environmental injustice. Approximately 70 percent of contaminated waste sites are in low-income neighborhoods, and communities of color are likely to experience higher rates of air pollution and lead poisoning as well as greater numbers of toxic waste facilities and landfills; these same communities are disproportionately burdened by the impacts of climate change caused in part by food waste decomposition.

The emergence of “food systems law” is part of the increasing awareness of the problems within our food system. These problems generate opportunities for lawyers, who are problem solvers by trade, to create solutions. Professor Mindy Goldstein, director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic (TELC), says TELC is committed to creating these solutions. She says, “Around cities, the clinic is helping increase local food production, which in turn improves food access, revitalizes underserved communities, conserves land, sequesters carbon, and builds local businesses. Across the country, the clinic is advocating for a range of sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices to protect land, air, water, animals, and farmers.” One of the ways TELC is helping solve problems created by our food system is by lending their legal brains to a project that will take technology that’s never been used in urban environments and bringing it to Emory.

Today, anaerobic digesters (oxygen-free sealed containers that break down food waste into fertilizer or biogas) are mainly being used on farms in the United States to compost sewage and farm waste or at wastewater treatment plants; creating a way for anaerobic digestors to be used in urban settings could change the way food waste affects our environment and, thus, the people. Emory University is creating an anaerobic digester which composts food waste from campus, and the methane gas it produces will be captured and used as renew-able energy to power boilers on campus. And TELC is helping to overcome the numerous legal challenges that this extraordinary effort presents.

THE EMORY INFLUENCE

In the fall of 2020, the EPA selected 12 recipi-ents expected to receive approximately 3 million dollars in funding to help reduce food loss and waste and to divert food waste from landfills by expanding anaerobic digester capacity in the United States. While each organization has different approaches and goals, Emory will establish a prototype on its campus for anerobic digestion (AD) of food waste in an urban area to produce renewable biogas and soil amendments. Emory will digest food waste generated on Emory’s campus, but their hope is that Atlanta, and cities around the country, can learn from Emory’s example and develop their own AD projects with equity and environmental justice at the fore.

The university will serve as a demonstration of equity by design that eliminates environmental justice concerns, including, but not limited to, odor, noise, and harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Faculty and student research will focus on the AD prototype and will provide critical feedback to the city, other metro municipalities, corporations, and the public about challenges with regulations, technology, utility acceptance of the biogas in its transmission lines, and community feedback on the proposed approach.

To meet the EPA goal to cut food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030, AD provides a comparatively cost-effective technology for renewable energy production and waste treatment. Currently, most AD systems in the US are at wastewater treatment plants and farms in rural areas with abundant access to land, low waste disposal costs, and few neighbors to complain about odor or noise. The consortium of Emory environmental scholars proposes to create a conceptual design that will not only reduce the amount of food waste and waste activated sludge, but also produce renewable natural gas. Emory will create a prototype that can be easily replicated and scaled to other campuses and communities for the city and surrounding municipalities. The city approached Emory for partnership due to the university’s longstanding food waste collection system, which collects 2,000 tons each year and currently maintains a 73 percent annual rate of diver-sion from landfills. The city has completed feasibility plans to install a centralized AD facility at one of its wastewater treatment plants to convert biosolids and food waste from a planned city-wide food waste collection program into renewable natural gas.

THE SOCIAL JUSTICE CLAUSE

Landfills negatively affect local communities with odor, noise, air quality impacts from vehicles, litter, harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and potential for water quality impacts from leachate. The public would benefit from AD for food waste with the reduced need for new landfills and reduced organics in existing landfills producing methane (CH4) and leachate. Landfills are one of the largest anthropogenic global methane sources, contributing to climate change. In the US, landfills are the third largest source of US methane emissions and 20 percent of 29 teragrams per year is estimated from this source, after natural gas systems and enteric fermentation. Reducing these emissions is a major benefit to the public and Emory will achieve this by reducing both our food waste and contaminated recycling material stream, as well as by producing bio-gas for onsite energy.

The city, like other urban areas, has soil contamination from heavy metals and other pollutants which cause public health concerns for urban agriculture and gardening. EPA has been conducting a cleanup in Atlanta of lead in urban soils from past practices. Eri Saikawa, associate professor and director of graduate studies for Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences, and Professor Goldstein have been working with community members on this issue. The AD prototype at Emory will design its system so that the food waste will be transformed into a soil amendment that is safe for use in urban food production. This cobenefit further improves our local food system. Here’s how the AD works — we input food waste; that waste is digested; we capture methane from the digestion process to use as a source of energy; after digestion is complete, the end product is a soil amend-ment that can be added to urban farms or greenspaces to improve soil quality.

The proposed site of the city’s central facility is in an historically underserved, majority black, formerly redlined neighborhood. Emory’s prototype will demonstrate the value of AD in densely populated urban areas with high land and waste disposal costs. Most importantly, Emory’s prototype will address upfront in its design environmental justice concerns of odor, noise, air quality from ammonia and other pollutants, water quality from effluents, quality of the digestate for food production, and acceptance of the resulting biogas to the utility. Traditionally, such environmental justice concerns would be con-sidered after design during location battles that too often deepen societal divisions.

Acceleration of development of AD in the US requires placement in urban areas, like Emory’s campus in Atlanta, where most food waste is generated, and energy is used. It is also where environmental issues must be addressed upfront to stop the tradition of placing polluting municipal services in disadvantaged communities with resulting community impacts. The goal is to create a new paradigm for environmental justice.

Legal assessments will be done at the Clinic and the students will use this as their educational opportunity to draft legal reports and white papers, in working with other Emory undergraduate and graduate students in a multidisciplinary manner.

Fighting for environmental justice has never been more important— communities of color have been disproportionately harmed by the burdens of pollution, climate change, and public health crises like the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted the food system. Communities of color disproportionately shouldered the burden of that disruption—suffering from food insecurity, loss of food service-related jobs. Emory is equipping its students with the skills they need to address these challenges head on. The creative problem solving, teamwork, and community engagement skills they learn through this AD project, will help them continue to promote environmental justice in their legal careers.

A HISTORY OF INNOVATION

Emory has served as a site for modeling innovative technology in the past, most notably with its award-winning WaterHub that recycles sewage using biomimetic natural technologies to produce water for heating and cooling buildings and toilet flushing. Emory also has an organic farm on its Oxford campus that supplies fresh produce on campus and beyond. Emory is an attractive site for the AD prototype for numerous reasons, including its Zero Waste Policy that produces a significant stream of food waste for AD and its ability to use the resulting renewable natural gas in its campus and hospital energy system.

The team is vast, but it is led by Dr. Saikawa; Joan Kowal, senior director of energy strategy and utilities for Emory’s Division of Campus Services; and Professor Goldstein, who will help overcome legal barriers associated with AD and develop solutions for enhancing AD use on campus and in major cities. 

THE EMERGENCE OF “FOOD SYSTEMS LAW” IS PART OF THE INCREASING AWARENESS OF THE PROBLEMS WITHIN OUR FOOD SYSTEM.

The group will hold various stakeholder meetings, international AD workshops to address different approaches, successes and challenges from other places and hear the concerns from the community members. The Emory team has experience hosting various stakeholder meetings, inviting government, NGOs, community representatives, in addition to researchers in academia. They will focus on the “co-production” approach, by both academics and non-academics creating trust and working together for the same goal to reduce food waste and to address sustain-ability challenges. They will also host an international virtual AD workshop, inviting all local and international partners.

This AD prototype will also result in several benefits, which align with the EPA’s FY 2018–22 Strategic Plan. Reduced methane from reduced landfilled food waste will improve air quality and curb the effects of climate change. Diverting food waste from landfills will reduce the release of leachate, protecting water quality by reducing pollutant discharge. The prototype will also contribute to the productive use of land and economic vitality, as the products of biofuel and compost can be used in other systems on campus.

Emory University announced its 2025 Sustainability Vision & Strategic Plan, which envisions 95 percent diversion of its waste from landfills. All major Emory University buildings currently house waste collection stations to collect five different waste streams: compost, plastics and metals, mixed paper, white paper, and landfill waste. Currently, Emory has a landfill diversion rate of 73 percent. A waste audit showed that 60–70 percent of Emory’s waste stream was food and thus adopting strategies to create a clean compost stream has been important in making progress toward achieving a 95 percent landfill diversion rate. Emory’s landfill diversion rate is one of the highest in the country and has led it to serve as an examplar for other campuses and municipalities throughout the US.

In addition to its existing, robust food waste collection program, Emory is committed to producing at least 10 percent of its energy needs on campus to reduce GHG emissions. Emory has already committed to more than 5.5 megawatts of on-site solar installations and will use the AD produced renewable natural gas for the steam plant that produces electric energy with a steam turbine generator. Emory also has plans for an on-campus microgrid that has natural gas engines that can use biogas for operation.

Emory has the benefit of internal resources such as the TELC and the Oxford Organic Farm. The TELC has helped the City in finding pathways and barriers to adopting a mandatory food waste landfill ban. The TELC found that a legal mandate is a workable approach to address food waste and recovery in Atlanta. However, one barrier is lack of infrastructure, such as an AD facility. The TELC has also provided the City with a legal analysis of zoning and other barriers to placing and running a commercial composting facility in Atlanta. Through this project, the TELC will extend that legal and regulatory analysis to AD deployment in Atlanta; its initial assessment is that Emory legally can site AD on its campus.

In addition to internal resources, Emory has a strong record of accomplishment through its Sustainability Initiatives of deploying innovative sustainability technologies through equally innovative financing. Onsite solar has been financed through a private partnership agreement for solar energy procurement over the 20-year contract term with no upfront capital costs to Emory. Other capital infrastructure, such as a new microgrid, is using a similar third-party financing model. Accelerated deployment of AD in the US requires innovative financing demonstrations, and Emory plans to pursue such private part-nerships for financing, should the EPA grant be awarded for feasibility and design of the AD prototype.

PARTNERSHIP FOR CHANGE

Emory University will lead, with collaboration and partnership with the City of Atlanta, DeKalb County, and other surrounding municipalities, in deployment of AD of food waste for renewable energy and soil amendments in an urban area. Internally, Emory will harness undergraduate and graduate students, as well as interdisciplinary faculty and resources from Emory’s Resilience and Sustainability Coalition, TELC, Oxford Organic Farm, and the Office of Sustainability Initiatives. Emory will also partner with international consulates and other global leaders in AD to decide best practices and next generation solutions. For outreach, they partner with Science ATL.

An enhanced community awareness and understanding of AD opportunities and benefits will also result in reduced food waste and sustainable materials management. This feasibility project will provide a scientific foundation for environmental education on campus and in K–12 education. By incorporating AD in classes and research, Emory will create a next generation of students who are involved in innovative on-campus research and will increase AD capacity in the US. A better tie with scientists and community members will further lead to improved decision-making processes with evidence-based and community-engaged research.

TELC has partnered with multiple stake-holders for this specific AD project. The Emory team has a reputation of working with communities and various stakeholders to make this multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral work possible.