Composting of restaurant, food processing, and grocery organic residuals has taken off. In just two years, food composting sites have increased from 58 in 24 states in 1995 to 214 in36 states in 1997.

 
Chefs have been part of this boom. Composting can divert from the landfill as much as half of a restaurant's waste stream, either in an on-site restaurant compost pile of at a site to which organic waste can be transported for processing. This cycle of growing and returning organics to the earth is at the heart of any sustainable kitchen.

 
So how are today's restaurants and chefs composting?

In 1994 when Jimmy Mitchell (a Chef's Collaborative member) became Executive Chef at the Rainbow Lodge in Houston, TX, he allocated part of the Lodge's two-acre site for a kitchen garden. Out of it grew the vision to incorporate recycling into the restaurants operation, a way of creating "a new product out of what was waste," he says.  The restaurant uses a green 60-gallon trash barrel for all the green waste inside the restaurant, says Mitchell, who recently received an environmental award from the Houston Corporate Recycling Council for his composting activities. Vegetable trim, leaves, grass, and cardboard are layered in the 50-square-food compost pile and turned regularly. In two weeks to a month, the finished product is sifted and returned tot the organic garden where Mitchell grows tomatoes, eggplants, okra, corn, and herbs. Chef Colin Ambrose (Estia, Amaganett NY) says breakfast is his "big producer of byproducts." He adds 250 dozen eggshells and 50 pounds of coffee grounds a week to a composting pile behind his restaurant in rural Long Island. He also composts about 60 percent of the restaurant's green waste topping the pile off with grass clippings from around the one-acre garden to which Ambrose returns his finished compost. He shares the garden with two other chefs, Chefs Collaborative member Rick Moonen (Oceana and Molyvos), and Charlie Palmer (Aureole, the Lenox Room, and Astra), both of Manhattan- they call themselves the Basil Brothers. Fresh produce and herbs are delivered to Moonen and Palmer once or twice a week.

Ambrose says kitchen design is critical for the chef who wants to compost: "I recommend a vegetable station designed so that compostable containers are under the cutting surface. You need to eliminate movement as much as possible."

 
The garden produces everything from lemon cucumber to fava beans. Ambrose uses garden products for daily specials and advertises a "two-hour salad" for which he guarantees that the greens have been picked within two hours of a customer's eating them. "This," he says, "is how I market the garden."