ENVIRONMENT
Don’t Throw That Out!
Saving trash for the compost could save your town money
M
ost people would look at you kind of funny if you told them that you were thinking about keeping some of your trash every week. But, in a way, that’s what we are doing when we keep compostables out of the waste stream. New Canaan is the latest municipality to look into diverting food scraps through the Sustainable CT Community Match Fund.
Composting essentially solves both of those problems at the same time. Not only does taking out the food scraps from the waste stream lower the amount of waste that ends up in incinerators or landfills, lower the amount of methane that is created when it is left in anaerobic environments, but it produces good quality compost to be reused.
As noted in the fundraising page, currently food scraps goes right into the municipal waste stream and the problems associated with that are twofold.
The idea is clearly worth exploring, and that’s where the Sustainable CT Community Match Fund came into play. Raising over $4000 from the community, the town of New Canaan received $8000 total, $7600 of which was used to pay the haulers, while $400 went to signage for the transfer station.
One, Food that you throw out in the trash ends up with Styrofoam and plastic bits in landfills. These are “anaerobic environments,” which increases the methane gas in the air as the food breaks down over time. Despite being a natural byproduct, these situations exacerbate the production rather than through the natural composting of foods. Second, the hauling of these foods has to be paid for by the tax payers. As with most municipalities that offer trash hauling, New Canaan pays a company to pick up residential trash each week an bring it to the transfer station who bring it to landfills or incinerators. Neither of these options are great, so the ideal situation would be to reduce the amount of waste.
In the initial phases of the program 220 pounds were collected, but just two months later and over 800 pounds were collected. The only drawback is that you do have to keep some of your trash. They recommend simple covered buckets to collect the scraps while you wait to bring it to the transfer station. And while in years past it might have been a bit strange to keep some of your trash, more and more people are saving their food scraps to begin composting. It’s something the community agrees upon. INNOVATIVE IDEAS 2022 | 35
