You probably know by now what food waste looks like. But do you know what it sounds like? That sound has really stuck with me after years spent working in the restaurant and catering business. A cross between a “plop” and a “slurp,” it’s the noise made by trays full of fingerling potatoes, veggie lasagna, and pounds and pounds of other perfectly good, edible food sliding into a trash can…
Composting is a great option for kitchen trimmings, and food that has already spoiled. It reduces your impact on the landfill, and preserves the resources and nutrients for future use. But composting also takes resources and energy to create – including all of the energy, water, and fuel that went into growing and transporting the food in the first place! So, what’s even better? Buying only as much food as…
I have to admit something. Turkey is bland. I’ve always thought so, but I would still always put it on my plate because…it’s Thanksgiving! Then I’d stuff myself on everything else and the turkey would be the one thing left behind. Thanksgiving is filled with tradition of over-filling your plate, after all, even if it’s with something you don’t really like. But that tradition can leave a lot of turkey…
The Valley News published a story recently (Few in Vt. are using compost bins) that appeared to suggest that food scrap collection in Vermont was slow to take off. Now only did it seriously misrepresent the level of composting in Vermont, it wasted an opportunity to tell a bigger story. In 2016, local households and small businesses dropped off a healthy 743 tons. In 2012, the Vermont Legislature pointed the…
Michele Morris, our Director of Outreach & Communications, sat down with Jane Lindholm at VPR (along with Josh Kelly from Vermont ANR) to talk about food scraps. By 2020, all food scraps in Vermont will be banned from the landfill by the Universal Recycling & Composting Law (Act 148). Here are some highlights: As of July 1, 2017, anyone who produces 18 tons of food scraps per year (that’s 2-3…
Beginning July 1, 2017, CSWD Drop-Off Centers (DOCs) will begin charging $1.50 for each container of up to 5 gallons of food scraps brought in for composting, when NOT brought in with landfill-bound trash. Don’t get us wrong — we support and encourage people keeping as much material as possible out of the landfill. We just have to make sure that we’re doing it in an economically sustainable way so…
For many people, November is the gateway month to the holiday season and there’s never enough time, there’s always too much traffic, and the most convenient solutions usually turn out to be the most wasteful—leaving what’s left of your New Year’s resolutions in tatters. Relax. You don’t have to increase your landfill legacy while you’re out running around getting ready for the holidays. Take a deeeeep breath. Now let it out.…