Earlier this year, about 1,000 households in Meriden were given colored bags and a choice: Take a little extra time to use those bags to recycle old food. The initiative was part of an experimental program tracking the feasibility of so-called “organics” recycling in Connecticut.
The idea, which was funded by a state grant of $40,000, is twofold: make food waste recycling easy – residents can toss the colored bags into the same trash bin they already roll out to the curb each week – but also to see how many people would voluntarily opt to do that.
State data show that Meriden’s experiment is encouraging but leaves sizable room for growth.
“What we found is after the four-month pilot, approximately 24% of the available food scraps were captured,” said Kristen Brown, a vice president at WasteZero, a North Carolina-headquartered company that works with government officials to reduce waste.
WasteZero monitored data for the pilot Meriden project.
State officials are closely watching the results in the Meriden project, which were reported during a recent meeting of the Connecticut Coalition for Sustainable Materials Management.
Getting food out of trash bins is one way to drive down costs in an industry where money largely equates to weight. The heavier the load of trash and the further it has to travel, the more expensive its disposal.
Recycling old food is one way to make those trash bins lighter.
Federal data show that more food reaches landfills and combustion facilities than any other single material in our everyday trash. Connecticut residents throw away more than 500,000 tons of food each year.
“That’s pushing up the cost of managing our waste,” Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said earlier this year, “which is straining municipal budgets, and it’s increasing our cost of living.”
Tracking trash bags
With the imminent closure of a major trash-to-energy plant in Hartford, trash costs – ultimately borne by residents and taxpayers – are only expected to rise in Connecticut.
And now, the Meriden pilot is yielding insights into what may happen when residents are given the option to recycle leftover food. By scanning and tracking the colored bags, officials could monitor participation down to the household level. On average, the recycled food waste bags weighed about 6 pounds.
Overall, Meriden officials estimate that about 13 tons of food scraps were recycled during the four-month pilot. Brown said about 98% of homes returned at least one bag, but she said sustained weekly participation over four months was a greater challenge.
“Most days, it really ranged anywhere from 16% to 65%,” Brown said. “Ranging, I think in the end … a little under 50% participating across the board.”
Brown said some households recycled for the first two weeks and then stopped. There were households that recycled for a couple of weeks, did not for a few more weeks, and then started recycling again.
“There were a lot of residents that did want to continue,” Brown said. She added that communication efforts with residents could improve and “‘volun-told’ is really not good enough.”
“This was a volunteer program,” she said. “We did not get all homes participating.”
DEEP’s Dykes said in an emailed statement that she is hopeful the work in Meriden “will help the state gain momentum for scaling up food scrap collection programs.”
She said the state is optimistic that more cities and towns will experiment with food waste recycling to see what works and what doesn’t.
To enable that, Dykes said the DEEP will fund “similar solutions through the Sustainable Materials Management Grants Program, for which we will be announcing grants within the next several weeks.”
