“Compost is a really important thing for the community because we are trying to make our landfill last as long as we can and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that our community is providing to the atmosphere,” said Andrew Deci, director of Planning and Development, at a public information meeting Wednesday. “And we want to save money, too.”
The city is working with Garbage to Garden, a Portland-based company, to help teach residents how to compost and make it easier for them to do so. The company began offering curbside pickup service in Bath in January. A public kiosk will be set up in the coming days.
With its roadside service, residents receive a bucket to fill throughout the week. Garbage to Garden employees collect the waste every Wednesday, clean out the buckets and give the customer three pounds of compost if requested. The public kiosk will consist of two large containers at the Bath Skate Park, where residents can deposit compostable materials at no charge. The city has opened a commercial account to pay for that service.
Garbage to Garden has also started a composting program at Bath Middle School in partnership with the Greenhouse Club. A similar program at Morse High School is expected to begin in the coming months, said Garbage to Garden representative Holden Cookson.
A study conducted by the University of Maine in several communities, including Bath, found that 43 percent of the waste was organic material that could be composted.
“There’s a lot of potential for us to get this material out of our landfill,” said Assistant Public Works Director Lee Leiner.
“If we were able to get everything out of the blue bags, we might be able to come up with about 400 tons a year of material to divert to composting, which represents about 800 cubic yards of space in a landfill,” he said.
November bond
Bath residents voted in favor of a $3.8 million bond in November to construct a third and final segment of the landfill. If all goes according to plan, that segment should be operational by September of this year.
“That’s the last area that we have on the site to put waste in. Once we build that this coming summer, we’ll have about 10 or 12 years of space left in that,” said Leiner. “After that, we’ll have to start shipping the waste somewhere else.”
Removing organic material, which is generally heavy, from the city’s waste will make it cheaper to ship when that time comes, he said.
nstrout@timesrecord.com
Garbage to Garden
• WITH ITS ROADSIDE service, residents receive a bucket to fill throughout the week. Garbage to Garden employees collect the waste every Wednesday, clean out the buckets and give the customer three pounds of compost if requested.
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