The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has awarded more than $104,000 to a project slated to reduce local methane emissions.
The project, Expanding Organic Waste Collection, Processing and Availability in Rice County, is considered the brainchild of former Northfield High School students and earned the $104,125 Minnesota Pollution Control Agency organic recycling grant to go toward the total project cost of $130,156.
The project is expected to double the volume of the collected compostable material from households in Northfield to 1,100 cubic yards of food waste collected and diverted from the landfill each year by doubling the number of subscribers for Northfield Curbside Compost Worker Co-Op. The organization is expected to build a processing site in Goodhue County to take in and compost 1,600 cubic yards of waste material into a finished product. The product will be given and sold to customers including gardeners, farmers, landscapers and for road construction projects. The gran