When the Dutchess County Division of Solid Waste Management announced its $50,000 composting grant program in April, its administrators hoped towns and public schools would jump at the chance to buy an in-vessel aerobic composting machine — a commercial composter that turns food scraps into usable mulch.
Kerry Russell, deputy commissioner of Solid Waste Management, told the Herald that food waste makes up at least 30% of U.S. garbage. “Diverting organics out of the [garbage] stream can have a significant impact,” she said. “Composting is an ideal way to do this.”
Credit: Mary Jenkins
But the grant attracted fewer applicants than anticipated. “We weren’t interested in the grant,” said Stanford Town Supervisor Wendy Burton. “That large composting system was overkill for our small community.”
Other municipalities gave similar feedback, so a revised grant, issued in October, offered an additional choice: The county would provide $20,000 as startup money for an organic waste drop-off program so residents could deliver food scraps to a centrally-located standard composting site. Funding would also cover items like compost bins, shovels and garbage transport buckets.
Architect Dennis Wedlick, Stanford’s Climate Smart Task Force secretary, said the updated grant was still problematic. “The town would have had to front a lot of money and get reimbursed later. That would not have worked for us,” he said. “Our committee decided to look at other options. We contacted neighboring communities to see what they were doing, we consulted local soil companies about composting and we considered [curbside] food waste pickup.”
The task force also asked for input from Stanford residents. “We had to find an affordable solution that fit our community,” Wedlick said, “So we [created a] survey and had Wendy [Burton] send it out in her town emails.”
The committee received 75 responses — with surprising results.
“The feedback was entirely negative,” said Burton. “No one wanted to drop off their food scraps, or even have them picked up. But they all wanted to do composting — in their own backyards.”
Burton said this prompted the task force to “hold a brainstorming session” with the town Conservation Advisory Council. “Brilliant ideas were flying around like crazy!” she said.
Credit: compost-turner.net
The committees came up with a two-part solution: first, to use a small portion of the grant money to teach residents how to compost at home and provide the bins to do it. “Instead of costing the county $20,000, we would run a pilot program involving 50 residents,” Wedlick said. “It would cost a total of $2,500.”
The second idea was to have Stissing Mountain High School apply for the remainder of the grant money to teach home composting to students (too late for this year, as the deadline was Nov. 7). “We contacted Larry Anthony [food service director for Red Hook, Pine Plains and Rhinebeck schools] for advice,” Wedlick said. “He runs a pre-consumption composting program.”
Anthony told the Herald that each Red Hook school has a garden, so It made sense for the kitchen to compost. “We save all the salad trimmings, and they end up as mulch,” he said. “We’re trying to get something like that going in the other schools, too.”
“A composting program could have a ripple effect,” Wedlick said. “Parents would get involved and families might start composting in their own backyards. Students may be inspired to pursue a career in agriculture or environmental science.”
(Pine Plains’ Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center had a successful composting program, run by enrichment teacher Nelson Zayas, but it’s been on hold since his retirement this year. Principal Julie Roberts told the Herald that no staff member had volunteered to take over the project.)
Pine Plains Town Board member Jeanine Sisco became interested in the grant after speaking to Burton. “I thought Pine Plains should follow Stanfordville’s lead. [Even though] I wasn’t confident that anything could happen before the grant application deadline, I decided to send an email to Solid Waste Management.” Sisco included the details of the task force plan.
Deputy Commissioner Russell responded that the grant couldn’t be amended further for the pilot program, and that a better option for the town would be Municipal Funding for Food Scraps Recycling Initiatives — a new $1.25 million state initiative — with a January 2025 deadline.
Sisco said she plans on bringing the task force’s two-part solution and Russell’s recommendations to the Pine Plains Town Board. Burton is eager to pursue the new municipal funding source. “Getting the high school involved will be a lot for our community to take on, so it will have to be collaborative. We’ll need help from [Dutchess County Legislator] Chris Drago.” But Burton was optimistic: “We are the Little Engine That Could.”
