Tyler Skrzypiec empties a filled food waste basket for a resident customer. Blue Earth Compost was started in 2013 in West Hartford with a goal to recycle food waste into soil that can fertilize plants, as opposed to throwing away in a landfill or incinerator. (Cloe Poisson, CTMirror.org)
Food waste is a fact of life. Also a fact is that it’s smelly, wet and heavy. It makes a mess out of the rest of the trash and is generally nasty.
Getting food waste out of the trash may also provide the key to how Connecticut repairs the dated, expensive, fragmented and environmentally fraught waste systems in the state. But the question is whether it makes more sense to get the food out of the waste stream first or whether other parts of the system get fixed first so the food part follows.
Food waste is a fact of life. Also a fact is that it’s smelly, wet and heavy. It makes a mess out of the rest of the trash and is generally nasty.
Getting food waste out of the trash may also provide the key to how Connecticut repairs the dated, expensive, fragmented and environmentally fraught waste systems in the state. But the question is whether it makes more sense to get the food out of the waste stream first or whether other parts of the system get fixed first so the food part follows.
It’s a chicken-egg problem, and which comes first isn’t clear. What is clear, officials say, is that food waste cannot be ignored any longer.