Donna Walsh promotes turning food waste into a resource
STATE HOUSE LEGISLATIVE NEWS Bureau – Rep. Donna M. Walsh spoke about her legislation to divert food scraps from the landfill at a State House event Wednesday morning during which schoolchildren were honored for their recycling achievements.
The legislation is aimed at extending the limited life of the state’s Central Landfill by reducing the waste dumped there, harnessing the waste’s potential for production of energy and organic fertilizer and giving a boost to Rhode Island’s green economy.
With the proper facilities, it can be used to fuel power plants, and it can always be composted on small and large scales to create fertilizer. We might as well be tossing money in the landfill when we put food scraps in there,” said Representative Walsh (D-Dist. 36, Charlestown, South Kingstown, Westerly, New Shoreham).
She spoke this morning at a State House event organized by the Rhode Island Schools Recycling Club to honor schools from Burrillville, North Smithfield and Cumberland for rising to a recycling challenge issued by the club.
Cumberland was recognized for including schools in the town’s residential recycling program, and Cumberland High School was honored for its lunch room recycling program. North Smithfield High School and Halliwell Elementary School in North Smithfield and Burrillville Middle School were honored for a food waste recycling program they created, diverting cafeteria food scraps to the My Blue Heaven pig farm in Pascoag.
Pigs and piglets from the farm were on hand for the ceremony, held outdoors at the State House. Halliwell Elementary School 4th grade teacher Corinne Ferri fulfilled a promise to her students to kiss one of the piglets as a reward for their efforts.
Representative Walsh’s legislation (2014-H 7033) would require large producers of non-residential food waste to separate it from waste headed for the landfill and recycle it or otherwise process in a useful way, provided there is a facility available.
The requirement would be phased in beginning with large producers – those producing an average of more than one ton of such waste a week, most likely colleges and other large institutions – in 2015, down to smaller-scale producers, eventually applying to all Rhode Island businesses and institutions by 2021. Massachusetts and Connecticut have similar requirements aimed at large institutions, and a Vermont law will require recycling of all commercial and residential food waste by 2020.
Under Representative Walsh’s legislation, institutions subject to the requirement would be required to educate those disposing of waste – for example, students in a college dining hall – about how to separate food waste from other garbage and where to properly dispose of it. The institution could then either send the food waste to a food waste recycling facility or recycle the material itself onsite, provided it is equipped to do so safely and in compliance with all laws.
Representative Walsh said she got the idea for her legislation during a tour of Quonset Business Park, when she learned about a company called NEO Energy that is working to establish an anaerobic digestion facility there.
The plant would accept food waste from supermarkets, food-processing companies, restaurants, institutions and municipalities, separate the biogases for use as a fuel to generate electricity and heat, and recycle the remaining solids as organic fertilizer. Similar plants are widespread in Europe and around the world, especially in Germany. There are more than 1,600 such plants in the United States, mainly located at wastewater treatment plants, although relatively few use the biogas they produce to generate energy.
The requirements in her legislation would become effective only when such a facility exists to serve Rhode Island, but the legislation would not require anyone to use it. As long as they are not throwing food waste in the regular trash, institutions would be free to process food waste on their own either through composting or digestion equipment of their own.
Representative Walsh said, although her bill does not apply to residential trash, she hopes someday all Rhode Islanders will be separating food waste, and that municipal waste collection would include separate containers for food scraps, just like there are for recyclables.
Dozens of large U.S. cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, require residents to separate food waste for composting or other processing, and New York City recently began a voluntary program. Rhode Island’s small size, and its situation of having a single, statewide landfill that is on track to be filled to capacity by about 2038, are good reasons to consider a statewide requirement for food waste separation.
Besides, municipalities save money on landfill tipping fees when they reduce the trash they haul there. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that food and yard waste make up about 28 percent of what’s thrown out nationwide.
“Many Rhode Islanders, in the cities, the suburbs and the rural communities, are already composting at home. It’s easy once you get in the habit, and there are so many benefits. I’m glad to see a future generation – the kids who joined us at the State House today – already understand the benefits of turning food waste into something useful, and I’m hopeful that we’ll be doing something better with much of the food waste in our state soon,” said Representative Walsh.
She has also introduced another bill (2014-H 7482) on organic waste processing on behalf of the Department of Environmental Management. While the general intent of the legislation is very similar, its specific requirements differ.
The DEM bill would apply to commercial food companies and manufacturers, supermarket, resorts, conference center, banquet halls, restaurants, educational or religious institutions, research institutions, military installations, prisons, corporations, hospitals and casinos that produce more than two tons of organic waste a week, and would take effect for all on Jan. 1, 2015, provided a recycling facility exists within 10 miles.