Community composting would be beneficial
To the editor,
Thanks to our select board and town management for inviting public assessment of the transfer station’s operations and services. It is an excellent opportunity, and so very timely when one considers how waste management can contribute to a healthy community and planet.
I am writing not only with thanks, but to urge area residents to take this opportunity to share not only your experience but your recommendations.
While the survey asks about recycling and composting organic yard waste, it doesn’t directly attend to composting the “wet stuff”- typically kitchen and food waste. And that’s a real biggie when it comes to waste stream issues:
1.) Municipalities, including ours, pay tipping fees when our trash is hauled off to the landfill. Tipping fees are charged by weight. The heavier the load, the more Kennebunk is charged; the more Kennebunk is charged, the more money comes out of our budget (our tax dollars) for that.
2.) Many complain about the Pay as You Throw practice, which mandates that we buy colorful plastic bags for our trash, and without doing so, will not be allowed to have our trash picked up by the town. Question: What do you need the plastic for? Answer: For the wet stuff. Question: Why? Answer: To prevent a godawful mess likely to attract all sorts of undesirable bugs and vermin. Question: What if we focused our attention to developing community composting facility, one capable of dealing with our food and kitchen scraps?
That would save us money in two ways:
1.) It should lighten the load carried off to landfill thereby lessening the tipping charges billed;
and 2.) it would do away with the necessity of those colorful bags we use for trash. Without kitchen scraps, trash should be dry stuff, right? So, not unlike our recyclables, could co-mix in our garage pails/toters with no adverse consequence.
I’ll add, 3.) It would save us the expense of having to manage the toxic practice that using single-use plastic bags is.
So, and in short, I hope everyone takes the three minutes needed to complete the survey regarding the transfer station, and that you add in the comments, if you agree with me, the need for developing a community-wide system for composting.
Andrea Roth Kimmich
Kennebunk
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