St. Louis Business Journal – by Kelsey Volkmann
Butler’s Pantry, one of the largest caterers in St. Louis, is the first business in the Midwest to install a machine that turns food waste and disposable dishware into a liquid that can be safely flushed into the sewer in 24 hours.
The caterer bought the Orca Green composting machine for $40,000 from Green Smart Food Services and installed it at the end of March, said Butler’s Pantry President Richard Nix Jr.
Orca Green, which stands for organic refuse conversion alternative, uses micro-organisms to eat the food waste so it doesn’t have to be hauled to a dumpster and landfill.
The machine looks like a stainless steel dishwasher and processes 225 pounds to 240 pounds of organic waste each day at Butler’s Pantry. Nix said he expects the machine to pay for itself in a couple years thanks to savings in trash-hauling expenses. Butler’s Pantry has 300 part-time and 55 full-time employees and expects to report more than $5 million in revenue in 2010.
Bob Bedell, former president and chief executive of the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, who left St. Louis to work in the same position at the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, started Green Smart Food Services in 2008 with Scott Tegarden and Jack Croghan. Bedell plans to eventually move back to St. Louis to help run Green Smart, which has eight employees. Bedell and Croghan’s business ties go back several years, as the former recruited the latter to start sports operations at the Edward Jones Dome. At sports events and conventions, the pair saw concession leftovers and dinner scraps “going out the back door of those facilities,” Croghan said. They thought there had to be a more efficient and environmentally friendly way to dispose of the trash, leading them to start Green Smart, which also distributes biodegradable drinking cups and cutlery.
Green Smart distributes Orca Green systems and partners with Totally Green of Atlanta to import them from South Korea, where it was pioneered and has been used for decades. About 7,000 of these machines have been installed, mostly in Asia and Europe where there isn’t enough space for landfills. The Orca Green system is used by Morgan Stanley in New York, Emory University in Atlanta, Whole Foods in Atlanta and on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. The units range in cost from $23,000 to $60,000, depending on the size of the unit.
Croghan said he sees even more opportunities for hospitals, prisons, schools and hotels to save thousands of dollars with the technology.
Butler’s Pantry is exploring the possibility of using the machine’s byproduct as a fertilizer on its company herb gardens, Nix said. The caterer is also test-driving the practice of taking the leftovers from certain events it caters, such as a 400-person dinner at Washington University, for example, back to its kitchen to dump into the Orca Green, he said.
“At universities, there would be a huge impact on trash trucks on streets and the loads they are taking,” he said.
“It’s just one small step that we are excited to take.”