Tour of San Diego Food Bank and their LEED Building

Some Eco Rotarians and Josh Dean, Program Manager of San Diego Green Building Council, visited the San Diego Food Bank. Their main building is certified LEED, and they bring ecologically friendly innovation to our community. 

Casey Castillo of the San Diego Food Bank led this tour.

Amongst the ingenious innovations we saw were lights that turn on and off depending on the natural light and the occupancy of the room.

The cool roof with a white cover helps to lower the temperature inside naturally, and on top of that are 1600 solar panels have been installed to provide more energy that what is used by the building.

The cold room is using Phase change technology that pull heat from the air.  As we walked into the room it appeared to be snowing.

Amazing building and such a good example for other warehouses!

 

They receive lots of donated food, unfortunately sometimes it's not in a good shape or too old... They then recycle it! A big machine, the turbo separator, separates packaging and organic products, they even figured out a way to magnetize the machine so small particles of tin and other metals weren't going into the compost. This organic material is then processed by the digester and put in the composter. The compost obtained is redistributed to non profits, community gardens...