Our Vision
GRAS' vision is to make Sacramento a model regenerative city, one that uses its own organic resources to build up the health and climate-resiliency of its neighborhoods.
GRAS is dedicated to growing a sustainable food community in the Farm-to-Fork Capital through education and action. We aim to make sustainable practices accessible to everyone.
As a community, we can take action on reducing greenhouse gases, and direct tons of organic matter each year toward building healthy soils in Sacramento to fight flood and drought, erosion, and heat-island effects, and sequester carbon and support food sovereignty... with the aim to retrofit our City with Nature.
Our Story
Green Restaurants Alliance Sacramento was founded in 2011 by David S Baker and Jason T May to help local restaurants develop sustainable practices. Coming from inside the restaurant industry, we simply wanted to do what Alice Waters did - send her scraps back to the farm - close the loop. We thought nothing could be easier... being in the greatest agricultural valley in the world.
GRAS teamed with local waste hauler Atlas Disposal to develop Sacramento's first restaurant-compost program. This program first went to Del Rio Botanicals, then soon thereafter inaugurated Clean World's new Anaerobic Digester to make CNG compressed natural gas. :-/
It was then that GRAS sought to develop an even more localized and boutique approach to diverting food waste. BioCycle magazine reported on community compost programs in Austin, NYC, Cleveland, and more. Sacramento was becoming the Farm-to-Fork Capital, urban agriculture had just earned the right to exist, and community and school gardens were sprouting up in all parts of town.
In the summer of 2014, ReSoil Sacramento was born, without a garbage truck or permit, but with bikes and a trailer.
JT and DSB founded GRAS in 2011 to help Sacramento restaurants develop sustainable practices.
Our Impact - Global Warming Potential
Food waste in our culture a large source of greenhouse gas emissions. By composting our food scraps, rather than sending it to landfill, we reduce methane emissions, which have a potency estimated at 25 times that of CO2. The EPA Global Warming Potential calculator estimates that one million pounds, has a GWP of driving over 929,000 miles, or 309 times from SF to NYC.
One million pounds equals 500 tons. ARB estimates 0.76 MTCO2e/ton food waste reduced through composting. This equates to 380 MTCO2e.
Additionally, compost has a key role in building green, climate-resilient communities, and healthy food systems. California's Healthy Soil Initiative stresses the values of healthy soil (see right) • Improve plant health • Increase water retention • Prevent erosion • Sequester carbon and reduce GHG emissions • Improve biological diversity and wildlife habitat.
Our community compost network works toward meeting the State goals of the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32, 2006), Mandatory Commercial Organics Recycling (AB 1826), and SB 1383, an effort to curb methane, which is considered a "short lived climate pollutant" and is key to its SLCP reduction strategy.
Meet the Team
David S Baker
ReSoil Director
A Sacramento native, David returned from a decade in Bay Area, with the question that if Chez Panisse can go Farm-to-Fork and back to Farm... why couldn't Sacramento?
Siquiero Olander-Rios
ReSoil Route Manager
A veteran of the food industry, Siquiero ensures day to day operations are up to our rotten standards. A pastry connoisseur par excellence.
John Boyer/ Edible Pedal
Bicycle Operations
Founder of Edible Pedal bicycle delivery service and Bike Shop (now in West Sac), John works with many of the same F2F restaurants. That's full cycle!
Bill Maynard
Community Garden/Advisory
Eileen Sargent
Compost Manager
Southside CG
Kris and Kat Burce
Compost Manager Truitt CG
Jeremiah Kimmelman
Residential Program Director
About Community-Scale Composting
Cities around the world, such as New York City, Washington DC, and Paris are making community-scale composting a part of its long term waste strategy. Without the infrastructure of a municipal waste program, these cities, and the communities within them, are taking action themselves. Food waste and keeping organics from creating methane in the landfill are critical to reducing methane gas. We are inspired by composters across the country in cities like Juneau, New Haven, and Florida.
Rather than having an organics collection, residents bring their food scraps to local drop-offs to be composted locally. NYC (pictured left) had over 221 drop off locations in 2013..
Composting locally (your backyard is best) is considered the "highest and best" use of these materials. Keeping organics recycling local is better than sending it off to other counties, or landfilling the matter.
Healthy soil has been the foundation of our city since its beginning (Sutter's Fort), and our City of Trees, and our Farm-to-Fork Capital. Composting locally produces the healthy soil need to build healthy, climate resilient neighborhoods of our future.
Community-Scale Compost Advocacy
GRAS has been a strong advocate for community-scale composting as an immediate strategy for addressing climate resiliency and food production in food deserts.
GRAS is honored to work with many organizations to help build up the infrastructure: CalRecycle, County of Sacramento, City of Sacramento, Mayors Commission on Climate TAC, and have been a speaker and/or participant at composting conferences with BioCycle and ILSR in Portland, L.A, Atlanta, and NYC.
David Baker is a member of the California Alliance of Community Composters, as a representative of ReSoil Sacramento/GRAS.
Media/ Press
Farm to Fork to compost in Sacramento, SN&R by Hannah Ross of Solving Sacramento
Five Sacramento Solvers, The Observer by Marybeth Bizjak of Solving Sacramento
Why to Compost your Thanksgiving Leftovers, ABC10, Fall 2021
"Cycle of Life," Inside Publications
"Bike Powered Food Scraps Collection" Across the USA, BioCycle, Jan 2017.
"Waste Not" Comstock's Magazine, October, 2016.
"Food Pioneers" Sacramento Bee, March 2016 in Sacramento Bee.
"7 Cities with Awesome...", Modern Farmer, Oct 2015