The county has released draft revisions to its recycling ordinance, which includes a requirement for businesses that generate large quantities of food waste to implement food waste recycling by January 1, 2020.
You may have already received information about the proposed requirements via a letter from Hennepin County or communications from the Minneapolis Regional Chamber. I am also sharing this information to make sure you are aware that this proposed requirement will potentially affect businesses in the entire county including restaurants.
What you need to know:
Requirements would apply to certain businesses that generate large quantities of food waste, such as, restaurants, hotels, grocers, residential care facilities, shopping centers, and office buildings with dining services that generate one ton of trash or more per week or contract for weekly collection of eight or more cubic yards of trash.
To be in compliance with the proposed requirements, businesses must:
- Have food waste recycling service in place;
- Provide food waste collection containers back-of-house and properly label them;
- Separate food waste from trash in back-of-house operations; and
- Provide education and train employees annually.
The draft revisions to the ordinance also include requirements for businesses to improve conventional recycling. The draft revisions incorporate the state recycling requirements and add service level standards and labeling requirements.
Here’s what you should do:
- Review the summary of the proposed requirements and/or the full text of draft ordinance revisions.
- If you have comments, provide feedback August 17 via a survey or by email to environment@hennepin.us.
- Stay informed about the process by signing up to receive county notifications with updates.
- Get a jump start on food recycling by taking advantage of free resources available, including a site visit from county staff to help you determine how to set it up within your operations, help with training, order free signs and stickers to label recycling containers, or apply for a grant to help purchase recycling containers, start hauling services, and purchase start-up supplies.
Next steps include reviewing the public comments, making final edits to the recycling ordinance, and submitting the final draft ordinance to the county board in September. The board will hold a public hearing in early fall to receive testimony from the public. After the public hearing, additional edits may be made to the ordinance before the final version is submitted to the board. Board deliberation and potential approval of the ordinance revisions is anticipated to be in late October 2018.
