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.
DPW director: Proposed trash-hauling deal could save Wilton $100K annually
J.D. Freda
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Wilton Director of Public Works and Facilities Chris Burney said that the town could save upwards of $90,000 annually with a proposed switch to Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority (HRRA) after its current waste management deal with City Carting & Recycling ends in July.Stephanie Kim / Hearst Connecticut Media
WILTON A public hearing will be held this month on the town’s proposed eight-year deal with a new trash hauling company.
The proposed switch to Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority to handle the town’s waste management services through 2029 is estimated to save upwards of $100,000 annually, according to Director of the Department of Public Works Chris Burney and First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice.
Steam billows from a tall stack near the power block facility at the MIRA trash-to-energy facility in Hartford’s South Meadows. (Cloe Poisson, CTMirror.org)
The Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority plant is a hulking presence on the Connecticut River along Hartford’s southeast flank – a sprawling complex of buildings and emissions stacks that was constructed for another time and use.
It shows.
In the winding corridors and rooms of this fortress-like structure which originally burned coal to make electricity and now burns trash to generate a small portion of the state’s power ceiling tiles are stained and warped after years of absorbing explosions from objects like gas canisters that mistakenly wind up in the waste stream. It’s noisy and it smells, though given the nearly 3,000 tons of trash cycled daily through cavernous holding areas across what seems like miles of conveyors and into the incinerator next door, logic says it ought to smell worse.
Robert Miller: A coalition s effort to improve CT recycling
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Newspapers, cans, bottles and other recycled material sits in a huge pile at the Winters Bros. Waste Systems of Connecticut recycling facility on White Street in Danbury.Hearst Connecticut Media file photo
In 1991, the state passed its mandatory recycling law.
In the three decades that have passed, much has changed. But not the laws, or people’s habits. They pull their garbage and recyclables to the curb for pick-up and think they’ve done their part.
“Something like 85 percent of people in the state want to recycle properly and they think they are doing it properly,” said Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker.
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.