Composting

by Kristi Vitelli

Chip Beckett wrote an informative article a few weeks ago about the increased cost of waste disposal when the trash to energy plant in Hartford closes. I am unhappy about paying more for trash disposal, and concerned about the amount of household waste Glastonbury will send to landfills in other states once the Hartford plant closes.

Some towns and waste haulers plan to recoup the increased cost of sending waste out of state by charging customers based upon the weight of the waste they generate. If we reduce the weight of our garbage, it follows that less waste needs to be sent to landfills. It may surprise you to know that some of the heaviest items you put in your garbage are food scraps. Next time you empty the coffee grounds or remove the banana and orange peels notice how much they weigh. How about that rotten head of lettuce you forgot about in the back of the vegetable drawer, it is heavy too.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, organic waste amounts to about 25% of a typical family’s waste. At food service businesses food scraps can be as much as 50% of their waste. This wasted food put into landfills comprises 8% of world’s total greenhouse gas emissions because when food scraps are landfilled, the oxygen-deprived environment causes them to release methane, a greenhouse gas at least twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide according to a 2018 article in the Washington Post on food waste. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group website points out a startling fact that “if food waste were a country, it would be third greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, after the U.S. and China.” 

Composted food scraps do not emit methane, like food which degrades in a landfill. On the contrary, it creates an extremely beneficial nutrient-rich soil amendment that can help to grow food, retain water in the soil, and soak up more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, which is all natural and chemical free. Vermont is so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions that they enacted laws requiring restaurants, stores, and homes to divert food scraps from landfills by composting.

Connecticut has not made it illegal to put your food scraps in the garbage, but if we want to limit the amount of garbage sent to out of state landfills, we need to change our ways and a great way to do that is by composting. Composting at home requires separating out food scraps that naturally degrade from those which do not and includes the ick factor of having a compost bin or pile in your yard which you must maintain. For these reasons, most people chose not to compost.

One night recently when I couldn’t sleep I decided to figure out how to make composting easy and eliminate the ick factor. I came up with the idea of inventing a Compost Genie, which would operate similar to a Diaper Genie, and contain the food scraps in a compostable bag that would then be disposed of when it filled the pail. It seemed simple enough except for the fact I am not an inventor, and I did not know what to do with the bag of scraps once the pail needed to be emptied.

Lucky for me, a couple of days later I read an article which mentioned a composting service called Blue Earth Compost. I checked out their comprehensive, easy to navigate website, and was so relieved to find out I did not have to invent a way to compost because Blue Earth Compost had already figured out how to make composting easy. The only problem was that BEC does not yet service Glastonbury.

I reached out to BEC and asked about their services and told them I want to encourage composting in Glastonbury. BEC is looking to expand east of the river and in addition to providing a home composting service, they service schools, businesses and town owned Transfer Stations. I have heard stories from Glastonbury residents who use the Transfer Station about the disgusting compost container which has discouraged them from composting. BEC offers a less offensive disposal method to encourage residents using the Transfer Station to compost.

Blue Earth Compost picks up food scraps normally composted at home, plus dairy, meat, bones, and grease, which are not appropriate for home composting because they do not break down naturally. It is much easier when you can just scrape the plate into the compost bin instead of picking out items which are not appropriate. Children can be part of the process of composting in schools since it is so easy.

BEC utilizes anaerobic digestion to speed up the process of composting. In three weeks your food scraps go from being a waste product to nutrient rich soil. Compost is an integral part of every garden. You have the option of having some compost returned to you or it can be donated it to a community garden.

Even though I compost at home, my small family generates food waste faster than my worms in the composter can keep up. So, I plan to use BEC when they expand to Glastonbury and have already signed up on their website as a client. You can sign up too at info@blueearthcompost.com or (860) 266-7346. I am looking forward to the day when I can scrape the plates into a bin, which when full is picked up by Blue Earth Compost who returns to me the compost to use in the gardens being planted by the Pollinator Pathway group. If we all do one small thing to reduce the waste sent to other states, we can make a difference and create beautiful gardens in the process.

The members of TALK Environment group seek to promote conversations about environmental topics in our community. If you have a related topic which you are passionate about, please send your ideas and suggestions for future articles to:prez@talk-action.org.  All articles are archived on the TALK website https://talk-action.org