Stoneleigh Golf Club in Round Hill will be the first private club in the mid-Atlantic region to commit to a zero waste food initiative at the Club’s Tavern.

The new initiative will require a complete transformation for its entire restaurant, wedding and banquet operations to an innovative on-site bokashi composting program.

Bokashi composting is a safe, convenient and quick way to compost food waste in your kitchen, garage or apartment. Bokashi, which means fermented organic matter in Japanese, uses a selected group of microorganisms applied with a wheat bran to anaerobically ferment organic waste. The process is odor free and takes less than half the time of normal composting techniques.

All food scraps, including meat and dairy, will be composted.

Damon DeVito, managing director of Affinity Management, which operates the club, is looking forward to being able to disposing of food waste quickly and effectively.

“Between member dining, golf outings and weddings, Stoneleigh generates literally tons of food waste annually,” DeVito said. “With membership and the numbers of weddings and charitable golf outings on track to double this year, serving those groups generates a lot of waste. This program will eliminate all of that waste – including meat and dairy.”

DeVito estimates Stoneleigh’s implementation of the initiative would divert more than 1.5 tons of food waste to the new garden.

According to the news release, with an estimated 4,400 private clubs in the U.S., if every country club were to use Bokashi composting, approximately 13,000 tons of waste could be recycled.