Project Activities
Our project focus is on post-consumer food waste: food waste that comes at the very end of the food system, in community prep and home kitchens primarily. This means the food left over on your plate at the end of a meal, food that has spoiled in your fridge, and scraps from meal preparation, all of which end up in the landfill unless intentionally diverted elsewhere.
This food waste has a tremendous potential to be part of the solution, instead of contributing to the problem of the climate crisis as it currently does. This project aims to address some of the barriers that currently exist to transition our community towards being part of the solution, and respecting our living and non-living relatives better in the way we manage our materials. Below are different aspects of this project that address education and access barriers, community capacity and skills, and innovations that close our food system by returning materials to our community.
Tribal entrepreneur DeArcie Abraham (center) grins while among her fellow trainees at the U.S. Composting Council training in Sonoma County, California (May 2024).
Community Capacity
“Capacity” within this project is loosely defined as the labor, knowledge, resources, and time available to a person or community to accomplish a goal. Our Tribal community often has a need for capacity to implement the vision and practices that our people want to see accomplished. Our community is filled with passionate, creative and innovative people, but with time and energy going to meeting day-to-day needs, we have a need to increase capacity in ways that will lead to lasting change.
Thus this project aims to directly address our community’s capacity to better understand and manage our resources, focusing on community and government services where they converge: at the Nixyaawii Community.
Tribal Contractor
CTUIR is working with Biowaste Technology, a local start up owned and operated by DeArcie Abraham, a CTUIR Tribal member and Nixyaawii community member. DeArcie is currently a student at Blue Mountain Community College working towards her Agricultural Production degree, and manages her Tribal start up which provides technical and consulting services around biological material management, primarily from food and agricultural production. Her many passions include composting to create a fertilizing soil conditioner, vermiculture (composting with worms), and anaerobic digestion (composting without oxygen), which is why her start up was formerly called Red Worm Composting LLC.
Biowaste Technology has been working within the community on food waste and composting services for some time prior to the development of this project. DeArcie has built strong connections with CTUIR’s Family Engagement Program, with the Dept of Child and Family Services (DCFS). Working with Family Engagement, DeArcie has been collecting some of the food waste that is generated as part of the activities hosted by the program, and using them to build her own modest composting operation at home, using its products in the community orchard she is establishing at Nixyaawii’s Wetland Park. She is also a recipient of an Amazon Web Services grant award to develop this orchard.
Our project is designed to support and expand the great work Biowaste Technology is already doing by funding capacity dedicated to this effort. DeArcie will be working with this project for its full duration (June 2024 to June 2026) and will be working with First Foods Policy Program to engage the Nixyaawii Community in food waste and materials management events and activities. Thank you DeArcie and Biowaste Technology!
DeArcie takes a selfie during her time at the U.S. Composting Council training in Sonoma County, California (May 2024).
Attendees at the 2024 CTUIR Community Picnic talk with DeArcie about food waste and participate in survey questions about food waste knowledge and behaviors.
Biowaste Technology has been working with the Tribal community for many years, and collaborated with First Foods Policy Program on this presentation as part of the Climate Resilience Listening Sessions on Oct 5th and 6th 2023.
Government & Community
CTUIR is a federally recognized Tribe with a 176,000 acre Umatilla Indian Reservation and a population of over 3,000 people who reside there. Thus the Tribal government provides much of the community its government services directly and has jurisdiction over the lands on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Around 450 people comprise the Tribal government staff, with roughly half of these employees also being Tribal members or descendants. Many of the non-Tribal staff are also actively involved in the local and Tribal community. Thus CTUIR government staff are also integrally part of the Tribal community, and many participate dedicatedly with Nixyaawii community activities.
First Foods Policy Program (FFPP) is within CTUIR’s Dept of Natural Resources (DNR), and works with programs within and outside of DNR to implement collaborative projects that address First Foods and climate adaptation. Subsequent to the publication and adoption of the CTUIR Climate Adaptation Plan (CAP), FFPP began working with staff and community on independent projects identified in the CTUIR CAP to expand the Tribe’s existing climate adaptation initiatives.
FFPP is excited to work with Biowaste Technology on this project, and is providing financial match to the USDA funding for this project through FFPP staff time dedicated to the project. FFPP will be integrally involved in this project through its duration (June 2024- May 2026), and we are grateful to FFPP and DNR staff who are involved in making this project happen!
First Foods Policy Program interim manager Althea Huesties-Wolf (right) considers a vermicomposting activity designed for K12 students as part of the Portland Metro and Oregon Natural Resource Education Program (ONREP)’s “Garbology” training course for educators.
First Foods Policy Program interim manager Althea Huesties-Wolf (right) tours the City of Portland’s Waste Transfer Station as part of the Portland Metro and Oregon Natural Resource Education Program (ONREP)’s “Garbology” training course for educators.
K12 and College
Capacity isn’t only found in government services, but in community volunteers and families as well. Project activities also aim to increase capacity by providing skills and decision-making based education to local and Tribal families. FFPP collaborates with local schools on educational activites, including student waste audits. We are actively looking for local K12 schools and colleges who are interested in hosting materials management educational opportunities with our project!
Sudents with the Pilot Rock 8th & 9th grade summer school class discuss which of the items in the project activity trash bags belongs in which sorted categories as part of a waste audit activity.
Sudents with the Pilot Rock 8th & 9th grade summer school class discuss which of the items in the project activity trash bags belongs in which sorted categories as part of a waste audit activity. Staff from CTUIR’s First Foods Policy Program and Cultural Resource Protection Program (CRPP) provide guidance to students as they sort trash.
Pilot Rock 8th & 9th grade summer school class set up buckets for each waste category as part of a waste audit activity (July 2024).
FFPP is also fortunate to have a fantastic Tribal youth Climate Change Intern Ermia Butler assisting with this project, and she has been developing educational materials for use with outreach. Ermia is currently a Washington State University student studying Environmental Science and Sociology, and plans to use her education to help protect First Foods and her Tribal community against climate impacts. As part of this project, Ermia has been part of K12 waste audit activities, reasearched and developed outreach posters (see below) and engaged the Tribal community with food waste survey questions during outreach events. She works remotely with First Foods Policy Program during her school semesters, and hopes to graduate this academic year and enter a Masters Program with WSU in 2025.
FFPP Climate Change Intern Ermia Butler (center) chats with Community Picnic attendees as they participate in survey questions about food waste understanding and behavior (Aug 2024).
FFPP Climate Change Intern Ermia (right) and Water Resources Program staff Lyndsi Lewis have a good day of outreach at the Return to the River Festival at the Walla Walla Community College (May 2024).
Collaborating with Local Practicioners
Our project also seeks to learn from those in our community who are already doing this work on a large scale. Pendleton Sanitary Service Inc. (PSSI) has been an amazing partner for CTUIR’s Tribal Environmental Recovery Facility (TERF), which provides materials management services to the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and with our project. PSSI is generous with their knowledge and has provided our project team with tours of their composting operation, which takes in food waste from select locations in Umatilla County. We are grateful to PSSI for their participation with our project!
As part of CTUIR’s Climate Resilience Listening Sessions in Oct 2023, PSSI hosted FFPP staff and Biowaste Technology on a tour of their composting operation on a day when they were receiving food waste from three locations in Umatilla County. This is video of the tour as edited by FFPP staff.
Food Waste Assessment
Understanding CTUIR’s baseline of food waste is essential for developing a framework for tracking and improving materials management in the community. To date, CTUIR has not conducted any attempt to quantify types and volumes of waste currently generated, except for what is required for services provided by CTUIR’s Tribal Environmental Recovery Facility (TERF). Our project focuses on a small concentration of our Tribal community in order to create a baseline understanding of waste management and food waste contributions specifically.
Site Waste Audits and Trainings
Within the Nixyaawii Community core, there are a number of sites that are participating with our project to gain an understanding of current food waste values and collect food waste for the biodigester demonstration. Many locations are a mix of public and community locations, and include the Nixyaawii Longhouse, the Nicht-Yow-Way Seniors Center, Mission Market Corner Store, Family Engagement Building, and other Tribal services that are located in the Nixyaawii (Mission) area. We are also working with CTUIR Housing to identify and coordinate with Tribal families of the Mission residential area who are interested in participating.
DeArcie Abraham with Biowaste Technology weighs food waste from Root Feast in April 2024 and records the amount, as part of information to be included in the Food Waste Assessment.
Food waste collection was conducted during the 2024 Root Feast in April as observation and preliminary data for our food waste audits in the future.
Community Survey
The second component to Nixyaawii’s Food Waste Assessment is a community survey that asks families to evaluate their own food waste habits. These surveys exist both as one-off questions designed for specific occasions like Feasts, and traditional survey approaches. These survey answers will be compiled and provided in the Food Waste Assessment.
A Community Picnic attendee chats with DeArcie about the food waste survey and other project elements at the project’s event booth. Youth activities are a standard offering as part of project engagement, and recycling and composting themed activity pages are typically present.
Sticky dot surveys are great for engaging the Tribal community at specific events, and provide preliminary data to a formal food waste survey. Participants were asked to indicate their answers using the sticky dots, and for this specific activity, the color dots don’t have any different significance.
DeArcie with Biowaste Technology helps Huckleberry Feast participants understand and answer food waste survey questions in a sticky dot survey.
Sticky dots are layered on top of graphics indicating different answers to the survey question, “In your home, what are the three most common reasons why food is thrown away?” Answer options included: Spoiled or went stale; No one wanted to eat it; cleaning out the fridge; more food than we could eat; not at home to eat it; and we don’t have food waste. Most people indicated food was thrown away in their homes because it spoiled or went stale, or they were cleaning out the refrigerator/pantry.
Education and Practices
Asking our community to change their current behaviors can take a lot of energy from everyone. Diverting materials from landfills requires knowledge of what can be diverted and where to send it, as well as additional labor in physically sorting one waste stream from another. If our community is better informed on appropriate materials management and have the assistance and incentive to change, we are more likely to overcome obstacles. Community education comes in the form of providing accessible information, as well as conducting waste audit activities and creating engaging ways of decision-making when it comes to our food and materials choices.
An infographic developed by FFPP Climate Change Intern Ermia Butler as educational materials produced by the project. This infographic is designed to provide information on types of materials that can be recycled, with an aim to inform family food purchases based on packaging material.
Longhouse Single Use Plastic Campaign
As part of reducing waste all around in our community, First Foods Policy Program (FFPP) has invested project funds from our Meyer Memorial Trust partnership into reusable utensil sets that are made from sustainable wheat straw bioplastic. These utensil kits -- which are meant to be taken home, washed, and reused – are made from plastic created with straw material left over from wheat production instead of petroleum. With the amount of commercial wheat grown in CTUIR’s homelands, wheat straw bioplastic is a possible carbon removal option for CTUIR.
These utensil sets are given out at different outreach events, and regularly to attendees at Feasts at Nixyaawii Longhouse. The intent is to reduce the amount of single use plastic cutlery being used at Nixyaawii events by encouraging participants to remember to bring their own.
Butch Dick, a Tribal Gatherer and knowledge keeper, holds our reusable utensils kit to show them off; thanks to Meyer Memorial Trust for generously supporting our efforts.
Two Gatherers smile in the Nixyaawii Longhouse kitchen; one holds up blue bioplastic utensils from the kit to demonstrate she brought them for Feast.
Bio Digester Demonstration
First Foods Policy Program and Biowaste Technology are excited to implement the main feature of our project, an anaerobic digester located at the Nixyaawii Longhouse. Details will be coming soon about this feature, so please look out for those!
DeArcie Abraham with Biowaste Technology laughs with a Root Feast attendee as she weighs food waste diverted from the Feast’s prep kitchen (April 2024). Once the bio digester is installed, this food waste will be an input into the digester.
FFPP staff Colleen Sanders asks Celery Feast attendees to express their opinion on a potential location at the Longhouse to site the bio digester in Feb 2024.
Carbon Calculations
When food waste decomposes without oxygen, it creates gaseous methane. If food is thrown into a landfill, it creates methane that can escape into the atmosphere and contribute to the climate crisis. When food waste is deposited into the bio digester it also breaks down to release methane, but this is trapped by the bio digester and syphoned into storage vessels and used as a direct use fuel, similar to butane. While carbon dioxide is emitted through combustion, a worse greenhouse gas is avoided by capturing the methane, and creates a bio fuel that can be balanced with the need for reliable renewable energy for Tribal communities.
Connection to EPA CPRG outreach with ODEQ
Initial community engagement for our food waste project was conducted concurrently with listening sessions in partnership with the Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality (ODEQ). These listening sessions were hosted by CTUIR in support of ODEQ’s Priority Climate Action Plan development, as part of the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG). In these two listening sessions, held on Oct 5th and 6th, participants were asked to learn about existing carbon capture and removal options that are currently being implemented in our area, and indicate positive or negative perceptions of each. Posters for these different strategies were on display and participants were asked to place red or green sticky dots by concepts they either had concerns about or were in favor of, respectively. Two of these carbon management strategies were materials management and anaerobic digestion, both of which were received positively by event participants.
Participants in the CTUIR Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP) listening sessions at the Nixyaawii Longhouse sit at tables as they listen to “lightning round” short presentations by speakers about specific carbon management strategies occurring regionally (Oct 2023).
Tribal youth consider educational posters about carbon management options happening regionally, placing sticky dots to indicate their thoughts on strategies they would like to see more or fewer of in the near future (Oct 2023).
An educational poster is taped to a wall at the Nixyaawii Governance Center displaying information about methane capture and anaerobic digestion. Green dots placed around the poster indicate participants’ interest in the concept, and one red dot indicates some concerns a participant has (Oct 2023).
An educational poster at the Nixyaawii Governance Center displaying information about materials management like recycling and composting. Green dots placed around the poster indicate participants’ interest in the concept, which was completely unanimous (Oct 2023).
Funding Agency Disclaimers
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number 2024-70510-41990.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, any reference to specific brands or types of products or services does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for those products or services.
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