CANTON — Most people think of compost as something you pick up at the farm and garden store each spring. For others, composting is a backyard project, a way to make something useful from food scraps and yard waste.
No matter the perception, many people believe composting is going to become part of nearly everybody’s life.
The Canton Sustainability Committee has been talking about composting for several years, Village Trustee Carol S. Pynchon said. That talk eventually led to the village’s food waste pilot program that launched three years ago and is still going despite several setbacks.
This year alone, the shed that protected the waste bin and supported the device that allowed residents to lift the lids of the bin has been blown over in windstorms twice.
This summer, the project started producing compost, but it is not quite to the pace that was envisioned.
Meanwhile, the world of composting has been on the move.
On Jan. 1, New York’s Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law went into effect.
The law requires businesses and institutions that generate an annual average of 2 tons or more of wasted food per week to donate excess edible food and recycle all remaining food scraps if they are within 25 miles of an organics recycler (composting facility, anaerobic digester, etc.).
The law does not include New York City (which already has a local law in place requiring the diversion of food scraps from disposal), hospitals, nursing homes, adult care facilities, K-12 schools or farms.
The idea of a municipal composting program was harder to pull off than many thought, Ms. Pynchon said.
“We got started in fits and starts,” Ms. Pynchon said. “We have learned a lot and realized that we probably didn’t do a lot of the foundational work to get that started.”
Read the full article in NNY360.