While the town of Scarborough will end its pilot compost collection program in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood 140 days early after getting the data and feedback needed to determine there is interest among the community for curbside compost pickup, a pilot program in South Portland is continuing on for another eight months.

Julie Rosenbach, South Portland’s sustainability director, said the city’s food waste curbside collection pilot program, taking place in the Knightville area and much of the neighborhood between Ocean Street, Highland Avenue, South Richland Street and the Cape Elizabeth line, is working well and will continue through May 2018.

“Our program is different from them. They didn’t have to change any existing contracts,” Rosenbach said of Scarborough’s approach. “We did a hauling contract for a year, so ours is continuing on. They were really just two different models. We haven’t had any problems yet.”

While the systems differ, like Scarborough, South Portland is using the program to see if curbside compost collection is a viable way to reduce municipal solid waste. The city has set a goal of reducing 40 percent of solid waste through composting, reuse and recycling.

Those residents who don’t live in the pilot area can drop off food waste at the municipal transfer station at 929 Highland Ave. Backyard composting bins are also available through the public works department.

The food waste collection system, if, and when it is adopted city wide, may look different than it does now, Rosenbach said.

“Food waste collection is absolutely coming,” Rosenbach said. “How do we do it and when do we roll it out, those are the questions we will have to answer.”

Scarborough Sustainability Coordinator Kerry Grantham said the town has the data and feedback it needs and will end the pilot program five months early.

“We had really good data collection and we had a lot of feedback,” Grantham said. “The data is telling us people are interested in a food waste recycling, or compost, program, but alternating trash and recycling pickup was tough on some families in the pilot area.”

The goal of the pilot program was aimed at reducing solid waste, which, as a result would lessen the amount of money the town has to pay ecomaine to process municipal waste. Since ecomaine charges more to take on municipal solid waste than recycling or compost, a town-wide compost collection program could result in a reduction in the solid waste budget.

The pilot program started May 11 in a 260-household neighborhood in the Pleasant Hill section of town and was set to wrap up Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, after which time the town was going to crunch the data and to make a decision to either adopt the program townwide or not. While Grantham and representatives from ecomaine and University of Southern Maine students are still pouring through the data, she said it is clear that many residents, even outside the pilot program area, are interested in compost collection. Even if they didn’t live in the area of Pleasant Hill where the pilot was taking place, residents were encouraged to drop off food scraps and other food waste materials at three satellite locations in town: Maine Veterans’ Home on Route 1, Walmart on Gallery Boulevard and Pine Tree Waste on Pleasant Hill Road. Those bins were first made available shortly before the pilot program was launched.

“With the drop off posts for the folks that live outside the pilot area, we found a 93 percent increase in usage there. We understand town wide there are people interested in it and we think it makes a lot of sense to maintain those drop off points,” Grantham said.

Over the course of the 16-weeks the pilot operated, more than 17,000 pounds of compost material was diverted from the waste stream. Grantham said going into the pilot, the goal was to divert a ton of compost material a week, but the program has averaged closer to three-fourths of a ton a week.

To read the full story, visit http://sentry.mainelymediallc.com/news/2017-09-01/Community/Officials_look_at_trends_in_disposal_of_food_waste.html.

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