Convenience Stores Sell Food Grown from Own Food Waste Compost

Circle K Sunkus Co., a Japanese convenience store chain, has been conducting a series of tests for making compost from food waste. to comply with the country's Food Recycling Law. This law entered into force in May 2001 and obligates food businesses to raise their recycling rates of food waste to more than 20 percent by fiscal 2006.

On June 14, 2005 the company's chain stores in the Nagoya region, central Japan, sold 30,000 boxed lunches which used onions grown with the compost made from unsold food items. For the compost, the company collected on one July day in 2004 about 0.4 tons of unsold boxed lunches, side dishes and bread from its 36 stores in Nagoya City.

In this trial, the collected food waste was separated from packaging and then processed into compost for about 70 days in the Nagoya Organic Bio Center of Asahi Environmental System Co., a local recycling company. In cooperation with the Aichi Prefectural Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives and JA Nagoya, farmers grew onions on a trial basis from November 2004, and on June 6, 2005 they harvested 1.6 tons of onions to be used as an ingredient for boxed lunches.

Circle K Sunkus started related efforts in the spring of 2003, and hopes to help establish a recycling-based society, using the findings of this trial.

http://www.circleksunkus.jp/english/csr/ea/store.html
- Japan's Largest Methane Fermentation Plant to Recycle Food Waste (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/662-e

Posted: 2006/01/30 09:58:05 AM
Japanese version