New Food digester to divert food waste from landfill daily

April 29, 2025

Thanks to the generosity of Keep Delaware Beautiful in partnership with the Delaware Solid Waste Authority, we unveiled a new food digester yesterday at the Milford facility.

The food digester will be able to remove up to 1,000 pounds of organic food waste from the landfill daily at both the Newark and Milford locations.

The biodigester takes discarded food in a commercial environment and transforms it into grey water that is safe to send to water treatment facilities. The food waste digester machine uses a series of processes that include microorganisms to break down food and transform it into liquid.

“Every day, truckloads of food donations arrive at our loading dock doors,” said Food Bank of Delaware President and CEO Cathy Kanefsky. “And before anything goes out to the community, it’s carefully inspected, sorted, and organized. We work hard checking expiration dates, separating what’s still good from what’s not, and doing everything possible to save and redirect food so it can end up where it belongs: on someone’s table. But no matter how thorough we are, some food is just beyond saving. And that’s where the ORCA comes in. It allows us to turn unavoidable food waste into an environmentally responsible solution, breaking it down on-site and diverting it from the landfill.”

The DE Solid Waste Authority has partnered with Keep DE Beautiful to fund the food digester grant program. Yesterday marked the third grant awarded with the anticipation of additional grants awarded annually. Future grant awards could include large food generators such as hospitals, supermarkets, schools, cafeterias, or hotels.

Mike Parkowski with the Delaware Solid Waste Authority said, “This new program is a great step in decreasing food waste going to the landfill. We worked with the University of Delaware to study food digesters’ impact on existing sewer systems. We believe this is a positive program that will be instantly impactful for both the Food Bank of Delaware and the landfill.”

DSWA is a proud founding sponsor of Keep Delaware Beautiful, a non-profit organization with the purpose of fostering and promoting Keep America Beautiful programs focused on litter prevention, community beautification and minimizing the impact of solid waste in the State of Delaware. Learn more at KeepDelawareBeautiful.com

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