VICTORY DANCE FOODS COMPOST PROGRAM
Even though we use “whole plant juice” in our signature line of Garden Granola®, utilizing both the pulp and the juice for the fresh fruits and vegetables, there are still many parts of the fruits and vegetables we process that we cannot use in our granola. For example, when we cut fresh pineapple we generate pineapple skins and fronds as waste and when we squeeze organic lemons, we generate lemon rinds as waste. We don’t want this waste going into a landfill contributing to greenhouse gases when it could be composted and turned into a soil.
We are proud to share that starting in the summer of 2020 we established a company wide composting program and all of our food waste is now composted! To accomplish we originally partnered with Chicago-based Healthy Soil Compost and continued our composting relationship when they joined forces with The Urban Canopy in 2021 .
We have created a tracker to measure our impact over time! Please note when we started tracking we thought we would have time to update this on a monthly basis but as we’ve grown we realized this is not feasible so we are now aiming to update it on a quarterly basis.
Victory Dance Foods - Compost Tracker
IMPACT
Since the start of our Composting program in August of 2020 VICTORY DANCE FOODS has diverted 11,293 lbs of food waste from landfills, which is equivalent to 8067 lbs Carbon of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduced, which according to EPA.GOV Greenhouse Gas equivalency calculator is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions of 2.9 passenger cars driven for one year or a total of 33,303 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle. Or alternatively the equivalent amount of carbon sequestered by 222 saplings in 10 years. (Speaking of saplings, to learn more about our partnership with One Tree Planted and head to our Sustainability page.
screenshots of the calculations using the EPA.GOV Greenhouse equivalency calculator entering in 8067 Lbs of Carbon.
screenshots of the calculations using the EPA.GOV Greenhouse equivalency calculator entering in 8067 Lbs of Carbon.
Check back quarterly to track our impact ! To learn more about our composting partner visit The Urban Canopy They do both residential and commercial composting throughout Chicago !
LOCAL IMPACT
All finished compost generated from our food scrap’s that we pay to have picked up as commercial partners and members of the The Compost Club produces compost that is vital for healthy soil, some of which is used for dense vegetable production at The Urban Canopy’s two-acre farm in the Englewood neighborhood.