Many households have blue bins from the city to recycle.
Workers come once a week to pick up plastic, cardboard, aluminum cans and glass bottles that get recycled.
But what about food?
Elementary schools in the St. Paul public school district are recycling food. Each school has two different color trash bins to throw away garbage. Who would eat recycled food, though? The recycled food gets transported to Barthold's farm for pig feed.
The students throw their trash that pigs cannot eat, like popsicle sticks, wrappers and milk cartons, into a gray trash can. The spare food that can be recycled, like an apple core, banana peel, milk and cereal, goes into a special blue bin.
Student helpers stand next to the trash cans to make sure the rest of the students recycle correctly. If the student helper finds trash in the wrong bin, they use tongs to correct the error.
St. Paul public schools are in their second year of the program. Food Waste Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Carpenter said last year's program was a pilot, only having four schools recycle food.
Carpenter said the school district is saving a lot of money with this program.
"Walters Garbage Pickup is doing the field study right now on the numbers," she said. "We won't know the final numbers until mid-May, but we saved $185 a month in the pilot year per school."
The average school recycles around two barrels or 370 pounds worth of food three times per week, Carpenter said. Webster's Elementary recycles the most food, with six barrels collected three times a week.
Carpenter and St. Paul public schools won the Waste Reduction and Food Recycling award at the first Sustainable St. Paul awards. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman gave the award April 18.
Barthold's farm has five trucks, where each truck picks up 10 tons of recycled food per day. Each truck is a modified dump truck, with a 130-gallon water tank on top of the truck, that cooks the food in the truck.
Barthold operations assistant Harry Hjermstad said Barthold responded to the market demand for recycled food.
Barthold charges the school to pick up the food at a lesser rate than to it throw away.
"Pigs are eating machines," he said. "A 45-pound free range pig eats enough food where in six months the pig will be 260 pounds."
"Jennifer is doing a great job. This wouldn't have been created without her. It is a complete success."
Each school's janitor will bring the recycled food to a storage area, where a truck picks it up.
The truck driver then dumps the recycled food into the truck, cleans out the barrels, puts a new liner bag in the garbage can and gives it back.
When he is done with all of his stops, he brings it back to the farm.
He then hooks up a hose, connected to the boiler room, to the truck that shoots steam into it to cook the food.
The food cooks for 15 minutes at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
The food cools in the truck after being cooked.
It is then dropped onto a concrete pad to cool down.
Once cooled, a farmer uses a tractor to serve the pigs.
Barthold farms have been in business since 1988, providing food-recycling services to businesses in the St. Paul area.
Hjermstad said they use cost effective pricing and customers save money in garbage cost.
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