It’s no secret that Mainers produce a lot of food scraps, most of which end up either in a garbage incinerator or a landfill, where those scraps take up valuable space and become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. But the day is coming when that may no longer be the case.
Food scrap recovery efforts are increasingly popular in urban and suburban areas, and now they’re cropping up in rural towns from Piscataquis to Oxford counties, where Mainers for the most part have lacked access to programs that could divert those scraps for a higher purpose. To do so, town officials are teaming up with experienced organics recyclers in the private sector.
Organics recycling has become a focal point in the debate about the future of waste management in the state. With landfill space becoming an increasingly valuable commodity and a stagnating recycling rate, these efforts could help extend the lifespan of landfills while bringing the state closer to its 50 percent recycling goal, set in 1989. For these towns to succeed, it will require a behavioral shift not unlike what happened with recycling more than two decades ago.
“Hopefully after a generation of doing this around the state, it’s going to be second nature to folks to separate these items out of the trash,” said Greg Williams, director of waste solutions for Agri-Cycle Energy, which is vying for a slice of the rural organics market.
Not Wasting Anymore
Interest in recycling food scraps and other organics has grown in recent years. But the state largely lacks the infrastructure needed to translate this interest into action.
Just seven facilities are licensed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to collect food scraps from residential and commercial customers for compost, most of which are in southern and coastal Maine.
In Greater Portland, private haulers Garbage To Garden and We Compost It! compete for food scraps from households and businesses so they can turn them into what composters call “black gold.” Outside Greater Portland, however, Mainers without the acreage to compost themselves have limited opportunities to divert food scraps from the trash bin.
But that could be slowly starting to change. Earlier this year, the town of Greenville in Piscataquis County launched a pilot program called Greenville Organics, in which residents can separate food scraps and other organics from their household trash and drop them off in bins at the local transfer station.
The town partnered with Agri-Cycle Energy, an organics collection company, to haul food scraps from the transfer station as well as local businesses, restaurants and other institutions to Exeter Agri-Energy in Exeter, which operates anaerobic digesters that convert organics into biogas to produce electricity.
Greenville isn’t the only rural town that’s exploring the options for diverting food scraps and organics from the trash. This summer, the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments in Auburn awarded Agri-Cycle Energy a contract to potentially roll out organics recycling programs in several rural towns across Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.
Rumford, Mexico, Roxbury, Byron, Dixfield and Peru — which comprise the Northern Oxford Regional Solid Waste Board — as well as Greenwood and Woodstock are among the towns considering a partnership with Agri-Cycle Energy, according to Rebecca Secrest, an environmental planner at the council who is leading the effort to start organics recycling.
To read the full story, visit http://bangordailynews.com/2016/08/13/the-point/food-scrap-recycling-isnt-just-for-southern-maine-anymore-rural-maine-takes-a-bite-at-the-apple/.