Don't trash foodscraps

Summary: Turn your food scraps into black gold! Soil!

Description

According to the MassDEP, food waste is 25% of trash

Benefits of reducing food waste

• Diverting food scraps can reduce your household waste. It also can save you money in trash collection and reduce the smell of your trash bin.
  
  
• Without the moisture in your trash, you can line your waste bin with a paper bag instead of plastic, keeping many plastic bags from ending up in landfills or in incinerators.
  
  
• Food waste turned into compost is a valuable resource. It helps provide nutrients for plants and a healthy, living soil also takes up carbon from the atmosphere.
  
  
• In a landfill, organic waste contributes to the generation of methane and adds to the warming of our atmosphere. (While Medfield’s trash is incinerated, making soil instead of burning our trash is more desirable).

Which is better, composting or using a kitchen garbage disposal?

• Read in the Deep Dive why composting is better for Medfield than using your kitchen garbage disposal!
  
  
• Fibrous materials such as fruit pits and corn husks should not be put in your garbage disposal. Composting these items that can’t be ground is preferable so they are diverted from the trash. 
  

Homes with septic systems are discouraged from using garbage disposals as a means of disposing of all food waste. Read what RotoRooter has to say about it here.

Deep Dive

Sign-up to receive the Transfer Station and Recycling Committee’s monthly newsletter by writing to medfieldtsarc@gmail.com

Which is better, composting or using a kitchen garbage disposal?

Medfield is encouraging the residents to reduce the food waste that goes down the drain or on the tip floor of the transfer station. Instead, we would like everyone to use the organic waste/compost bins at the transfer station.

Here is the background:  

If you put your organic waste in the regular trash, it goes to the tip floor of the Medfield transfer station, and then will go to incineration. For the generally very moist organic waste, this is expensive and releases more greenhouse gases as the waste needs to be actively incinerated. 

When you put your organic waste down your kitchen drain, it ends up in the wastewater treatment plant. Our wastewater treatment plant does not have an organic digestor, which would cost the town upwards of $1 million to install. If we had one, then we would require a certain amount of organic waste to feed the system. Nor does it have a carbon capture, so highly detrimental methane from anaerobic decomposition is not captured.  For now, the town ships several million gallons of sludge from the treatment plant to incineration every year, which is expensive and adds a lot of greenhouse gases. In numbers, we shipped to incineration: 2018 - 2,767,600Ga, 2019 - 2,875,400Ga, 2020 - 2,167,500Ga. The numbers trend down, and that's a good thing, but we can do better!

On the other hand, the more organic waste we collect at the transfer station, the cheaper it gets per ton to dispose of. The trend is also encouraging; the amount of organic waste collected at the bins has been increasing steadily: 2018 - 12 tons, 2019 - 18.35 tons, 2020 - 26.25 tons.

So, all of our waste on the tip floor and the wastewater sludge goes to incineration, and reducing both reduces our greenhouse gas footprint and cost to the town. Composting our food waste is a great thing!

Steps to Take

Participate in the Transfer Station’s Food Waste Drop-off Program

• Read more about the program and what is accepted here.
  
  
• If you don’t already have one, sign-up for a transfer station sticker.
  
  
• Collect your food waste in a small bucket on your countertop or add it directly to a 3.5-5 gallon airtight transport pail.
  
  
• Bring your food waste to the transfer station.
  
  
• Food waste is collected in the green bins to the right of the tipping floor.  Check out the exact location on the Transfer Station map here.
  
  
• This program is very robust and allows you to divert nearly ALL food waste.  Unlike in a backyard program, bones, dairy, fish and other items are accepted.
  

Sign up for Curbside Composting

Black Earth Compost offers curbside composting bi-weekly in Medfield.  Read all about it here and get details from Black Earth Compost here.  

Backyard Composting

You can build your own compost system or a bin can be purchased. Backyard compost bins are available at Wills Hardware and are usually sold through the transfer station at a reduced rate during May and October Green Months. By composting in your own yard, you reduce the need to transport materials and you can add nutrients to your soil. Meat, dairy, bones and fibrous materials such as fruit pits and corn husks that can’t be added to home compost can be brought to the transfer station for the food waste collection program. Read more about backyard composting from the EPA, the MassDEP and the Rodale Institute.