Compost Press Release
ENTHUSIASM FOR COMPOST GROWS IN RHINEBECK VILLAGE
Rhinebeck Village—Local businesses and now a condo development are taking up the call to turn their waste into a renewable resource, in tandem with 100 households in Village Compost, a municipal pilot started by the Village of Rhinebeck.
The 222 residents of The Woods, a condo development in Rhinebeck Village, have a new way to collectively reduce their waste. Their HOA Board has subscribed to a food scrap diversion service. On October 29, residents came out to the clubhouse to check out the new communal collection bin. Each resident gets a lidded bucket to store under their kitchen sink or in their garage for all sorts of scraps (fruits and veg, baked goods and grains, egg shells, coffee grounds—even meat, bones, and dairy). They can dump what they gather into the clubhouse bin at their convenience. The collection bin is picked up and swapped out with a fresh one on a weekly basis by The O Zone, a food scraps hauling service owned by the Red Hook-based eco-entrepreneur Amelia Legare.
Liz Roth, Woods resident, HOA Board member, as well as a member of the Village’s Compost Subcommittee, introduced the food scrap pick-up program to the HOA Board. “The board approved the program unanimously with the caveat that we’ll start with one bin and pay attention to how many people take advantage of the program. So far, there has been a lot of enthusiasm and we’ll scale up as needed.”
Village Compost is also seeing more restaurants sign onto the program. Terrapin, Samuel’s, Aba’s, Bread Alone, and Sunflower Market have been participating since this spring, and now Market St. and All That Java have joined. Upstate Films has jumped aboard in an effort to compost its popcorn dregs. The arthouse movie theater is partnering with a neighboring business JSA Sustainable Wealth Management, which offers a drop off bin to its employees as a green office perk.
These efforts dovetail with a separate arm of the program: the Village government is subsidizing a 100-households effort to drop off residential food waste into collection bins behind Village Hall. The Village of Rhinebeck has undertaken this as part of its Climate Smart Communities goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste in landfills generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas, whereas composting sequesters carbon. The O Zone drives a blue, converted school bus filled with rolling 32-gallon lidded totes to Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, where the food waste is composted at their facility. Vanessa Bertozzi, a Trustee on the Rhinebeck Village Board, says, “We estimate that we are diverting about 2 tons of food scraps per month and reducing our CO2e by almost 4 tons per month. That’s equivalent to taking 10 cars off the road!” Pilot participants could take finished compost home for their gardens, lawns, and potted plants.
What’s next for the program? Trustee Bertozzi is cheered by the excitement among the current participants. “I recently applied for two grants, one from the DEC and one from a private foundation. I hope to get good news this winter!” The grant money would fund the construction of a municipal compost facility at the Village’s Highway Department, where yard waste is already gathered and ground into mulch, which could in turn be used in the composting process. “When we have our own facility we will be able to open the program up to so many more participants. Then we’d really be cookin’ some compost!”
Members of the public should refer to this webpage for more info: www.rhinebeckcompost.org