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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/01/alice-waters-sewage-fertiliser

US chef Alice Waters criticised over sewage fertiliser

Top US healthy-eating chef Alice Waters attacked for supporting fertiliser made of sewage that activists say contains toxins

        Alice Waters 

Greenwashing? ... Californian chef Alice Waters with her lifetime achievement award, given out at the St Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants 2007 at the Science Museum, London. Photograph: Frank Baron

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Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent

@suzyji

Thursday 1 April 2010 13.31 EDT First published on Thursday 1 April 2010 13.31 EDT

This article is the subject of a legal complaint made by Francesca Vietor.

Alice Waters, the California chef who helped turn Americans on to seasonal, local and cage-free food, is under attack from some of her own followers who say she has championed fertiliser made of sewage.

Activists from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) are picketing Waters's fabled Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley today in protest at her failure to condem a fertiliser derived from sewage that, they say, contains industrial chemicals and heavy metals as well as human waste.

The campaign has put Waters in an uncomfortable spot. She is regularly ranked among America's best chefs, and has worked strenuously to extend good eating from expensive restaurants into daily life. She lobbied hard to get the Obamas to turn over part of the White House garden to growing vegetables, and has encouraged school children to adopt healthy eating habits with her Edible Schoolyard programme in Berkeley.

But those good intentions clashed with activists trying to get greater oversight of a largely unregulated industry producing fertiliser from sewage waste.

The city of San Francisco, which prides itself on promoting greener living, had been giving away the fertiliser to home gardeners and local schools in the name of promoting healthy eating habits, but has now suspended the programme. The fertiliser was made of sewage waste collected from San Francisco and eight other cities. Local authorities labelled the bags as "organic biosolids compost", although federal government regulations say sewage sludge cannot be used for raising produce that is then labelled as organic.

The San Francisco giveaway was overseen by Francesca Vietor, an executive of the city's power company who also sits on the chef's foundation. A spokesman for Waters said she does not use sludge as compost on any of her gardens.

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In a statement today, the Chez Panisse Foundation hit back at protesters, and said: "The Foundation looks forward to ensuring public review of the science on this matter and working with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commissison and other relevant stakeholders to insure that safe practices are followed."

Activists argue that Waters's stance amounts to greenwashing. Tests from around the country have shown that city sewage sludge routinely contains a slew of industrial and chemical toxins. The Environmental Protection Agency, however, requires only minimal testing on a routine basis of the sludge.

"It contains a myriad of toxins. Everything that goes down the drain that is pulled out of the water ends up in this mountain of sludge," said John Stauber, an adviser to the Organic Consumers Association. "They call it recycling but it's really greenwashing. Bagging it up and calling it organic compost and marketing it to school gardens is a tremendous fraud."