Bourne Food Waste Collection Nears One-Ton Mark
The Town of Bourne’s food waste collection program is booming, having collected 1,500 pounds of food waste so far this calendar year.
The food waste collection and composting program is run through the Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) facility. Phil Goddard, manager of facility compliance and technology development, briefed the Bourne recycling committee at its meeting on Wednesday morning, March 8, on the program’s growth over the past few months.
“Word is getting out,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot better than it was last summer.”
More residents have been joining ISWM’s composting efforts, which are supported by Black Earth Compost, a Massachusetts company that specializes in handling organic waste collection. Through the program, residents and property owners are invited to bring food waste and scraps to the collection center in town for composting. Participants are asked to follow stringent guidelines to ensure that contaminants are not put into the composting carts, which are provided by Black Earth.
With the program approaching one ton of waste just 2½ months into the year, Mr. Goddard is hopeful about the program’s continued growth. One aspect in which ISWM hopes to expand the food waste program is through Bourne Public Schools.
Mr. Goddard said Bourne Middle School’s facilities and kitchen staff have been working to fill up a compost cart each week, using kitchen waste such as food scraps from preparation and leftovers from the kitchen. It is not a cafeteria collection program, something he said has a lot of difficult logistics to manage when it comes to managing contamination.
“We’re looking at the possibility with the school department of at least doing the other two schools on the campus out there with Black Earth Compost, which takes our compost and goes off-site,” Mr. Goddard said after the meeting.
Once Black Earth collects the food waste, it typically hauls it off-Cape. The county, Mr. Goddard told the recycling committee, did a regional study through the Cape Cod Commission that identified food waste diversion as a high priority. A memorandum published by the commission in September 2021 based on data from across New England identified that about 36 percent of the waste stream by mass could theoretically be recovered for composting or digestion, representing about 30,000 tons annually.
In terms of capacity for this food waste, Mr. Goddard said that ISWM is not equipped to handle it, nor does it have the room, but the county is looking at siting a regional food waste composting facility. The county is taking the lead, he said, but Bourne and Falmouth are both supportive of those efforts.
“There is discussion with the county,” Mr. Goddard said in an interview. “They presented at the military community civilian council meetings with the base to partner on a location that is remote that could take some food waste from the base, as well as the Upper Cape at least. So we’ll see where that goes.”
It is all still pending as the county determines how to proceed, but the siting of a regional site would mean Black Earth no longer has to haul waste off-Cape for handling, something that might be beneficial as other modes of transportation—such as by rail or by truck—become harder to access. Rail has become popular, Mr. Goddard said, but recent news of rail disasters and threats of a nationwide strike has proven that the method is far from bulletproof. The same goes for trucking, he said, which puts a strain on drivers due to long trips riddled with service limit requirements.
“You can’t drive for 24 hours straight,” he explained. “You need to pull over and get rest by law and you have to record that, so you have to have two or three drivers that are part of that round trip. The towns are obviously looking for any way they can to divert [waste] and food waste is one that is certainly doable.”
With regional interest floating around, the county will continue exploring its options for a regional food composting site. Until then, Mr. Goddard said, Bourne will continue its diversion efforts with Black Earth and work on expanding the program to residents and Bourne’s schools.
“Overall we’re very pleased with the tonnage increase this year, that seems to be on track,” Mr. Goddard said. “The summer is only going to hopefully bring in more folks and we may add more carts.”
Bourne residents and property owners who have a residential recycling sticker and are interested in composting food waste are invited to bring food scraps to the ISWM Residential Recycling Center at 201 MacArthur Boulevard. Food items may be carried in plastic bags, but the bags must be emptied and carried away from the facility because they are not accepted in the composting bins. For additional information, including ISWM’s “recyclopedia” tool, visit ISWM’s webpage on the Town of Bourne website.