Northeast Kingdom Waste Management District workers collect food scraps from about 20 spots around the region, hauling them in 48-gallon bins.
The district in June collected 96 bins, commonly called toters, said director Paul Tomasi. That number ballooned to 187 in July — the month Vermont began a ban on throwing out food scraps as part of the final phase of Act 148, the state’s 2012 recycling and composting law.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the amount of food scraps being diverted,” said Tomasi, whose district serves 49 towns across Caledonia, Essex, Orange, Orleans and Washington Counties.
Haulers and composters in the Northeast Kingdom describe an apparent uptick in the number of people and businesses looking to compost their food waste since July 1, when the ban went into effect.
And as in southern Vermont, some worry whether there’s enough infrastructure to meet the rising demand — especially with so many people eating at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eliza Perreault runs Cloud’s Path Farm in Sheffield with her partner, Samuel Carter. The two have been hauling food scraps for about 10 years, mostly from businesses. They compost the scraps they haul for use on their farmland.
Perreault said her operation has seen an increase in food waste from customers, particularly transfer stations.
“It hasn’t quite doubled, but it has gone up by at least a third of the volume we were receiving before,” she said.
After seeing a gradual increase in volume over the last two months, she believes the trend is starting to level, though upcoming holidays could lead to another bump.
Tomasi said his operation would typically send between 25 and 35 containers of scraps to processors in a given week. But the district sent 70 of those 200-pound bins one week in August, he said, a 7-ton total.
For that month, the district sent 231 bins of scraps to its processor, marking an increase across the summer.
“July was not an anomaly,” he said.
He thought the pandemic might be driving up food scrap volume. “But that certainly wouldn’t account for the difference between June and July,” he said, pointing instead to the ban.
“I guess we were caught a little bit by surprise, just maybe underestimating the public’s willingness to participate,” he said.
Tomasi said the district’s food scrap processor has switched from weekly pickups to twice-weekly hauls so empty containers can return to the system as soon as possible.
The district has also sold more than doubled its typical sales of home-composting units, he said, going from 60 or 70 to more than 150 this year.
Composting and food scrap–collection in the Kingdom predates the July 1 mandate, especially with farmers, said Josh Kelly, the materials management section chief at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The model here is local, small scale.
Black Dirt Farm in Stannard, opened by Tom Gilbert and Molly Barber in 2014, hauls scraps from schools and local businesses and feeds them to chickens. Eric Paris’ Kingdom View Compost in Lyndon started even earlier, in 2005, accepting food scraps and using compost at Paris’ Tamarlane Farm.
Paris too has seen increased hauls since the summer ban. Black Dirt Farm — one of his facility’s haulers — is now visiting three times a week, rather than once.
Paris said he didn’t see a spike in scraps early on. But in August, “we suddenly saw like a 400% increase.”
He pegs that to the reopening of places he works with; Kingdom View partners with about 25 places that produce food scraps, like restaurants and schools.
As a longtime composter, Paris is happy to hear about efforts made since the July 1 ban.
“I just really enjoy the concept that the food waste is being kept out of the landfill and it’s being returned to the soil,” he said, also citing savings people could reap by separating scraps and lightening their trash loads.
But he said the Kingdom’s food scrap and composting ecosystem has a challenge: infrastructure. He worries there are too few haulers and composting facilities to match the growing trends.
“The private sector really had to take the bull by the horns and make this happen,” he said. “And they have — and it’s happening — but it’s going to take a while before there’s a really strong network of haulers.”
A state list from February shows three food scrap facilities and composting farms in the Kingdom. Kelly, with DEC, said he knew of at least one new composing facility in the region: a farm in Irasburg that recently looked to register
Tomasi said the volume spike has made “us scramble a little bit,” but he thinks his waste district will be able to cover the demand.
“If we don’t see a leveling off, then I think it could impact us,” he said. “But I think we have the ability to adjust to that.”
