The Town of Riverhead celebrated the launch of its new residential food scrap recycling to compost program at the Youngs Avenue waste disposal site, another step in Riverhead’s ambitious goal to divert almost all the town’s food scrap waste from landfills by 2030.
The program, the first of its kind on Long Island, was created in partnership with two nonprofit organizations that promote the reduction of food waste, the Long Island Organics Council and Green Inside and Out, which obtained a $20,000 grant from the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute to create the program. The grant was used to buy the bins to store the scraps for the town, signage and to compensate the employees of the nonprofits implementing the program.
The town accepts only select types of food scraps — roughly less than half of the total food scraps produced by the town, Town Engineer Drew Dillingham said. More details on what the town accepts and does not accept can be found on its website. Dillingham said the town hopes to expand its program in years to come to include meats and other food items not found on the current list of food scraps. Residents can register for the program on the town’s website.