People often think Bloom is just the product of our flushes, but DC households also contribute food scraps to our recycled fertilizer through their garbage disposals.
A recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Grinding Debate,” highlighted Bloom in the context of the debate on what should or should not go down the garbage disposal.
As its contributor John Keilman writes, “Ottawa is one of numerous Canadian cities that ban ‘garburators’—the term for garbage disposals in the Great White North—saying its sewer plant isn’t designed to accept food waste.
It’s a different story in Washington, D.C., which bills itself as having the largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world. It uses microbes to transform solids, including food scraps, into biogas that generates electricity for the plant, along with fertilizer it sells to landscapers and farmers.
“‘We treat it as an asset,’ said Chris Peot, DC Water’s director of resource recovery.”
