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.
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Cosmos business makes good things from the bad
When businesses have wastes they can t get rid of, they turn to P.E.C.E. Recycling in Cosmos. It is among four businesses sharing in state grant funds to develop markets for recycling. The Cosmos business takes what others can t get rid of to produce materials with value and jobs. 6:32 am, Feb. 20, 2021 ×
A semi-truck load of vinyl tape end rolls arrive weekly at P.E.C.E. Recycling LLC, in Cosmos. The company separates the vinyl and cardboard rolls and shreds them. The cardboard becomes livestock bedding while the vinyl becomes the raw material used in making vinyl hoses.
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.