Middletown Leading State In Sustainable Materials Management

Press release from the City of Middletown:

Middletown, CT – Middletown’s Sanitation District is leading the State in sustainable materials management, diverting 62% of materials from the waste stream through better recycling and food scraps collection, surpassing the State goal of 60% diversion by 2024. Following two successful years of an innovative waste reduction program, Middletown’s Sanitation District has collected over 300 tons of inedible food scraps from its carts customers and restaurants for anaerobic digestion instead of incinerated as trash. In light of this success and Middletown’s commitment to environmental and economic sustainability, the Common Council approved the continuation of the Sanitation District’s curbside Save-As-You-Throw and food scrap collection program on September 3rd. Food scraps are a valuable resource and collecting and processing them to make clean energy and a soil amendment is a better use, environmentally and economically, than disposing of them as trash.

Overall, Sanitation District customers are disposing 36% less trash per year than the state average - these changes are a result of customers separating food scraps, recycling right, and changing their purchasing habits. Sanitation District cart customers will continue to use special bags for trash and food scraps. Pricing for the bags is designed to cover the costs of disposal of bag contents.

Save-As-You-Throw programs are common across New England and globally to reduce waste and provide cost control for residents, allowing them to reduce trash costs by recycling and diverting food scraps. Middletown is the first community in CT to utilize the curbside co-collection method and to include separate food scrap collection for restaurants.

DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said, “I commend Middletown for their continued leadership in innovative waste management efforts. DEEP is pleased that the city has decided to continue their Save As You Throw system after a successful pilot program. Middletown Sanitation District residents have seen dramatic reductions in the amount of waste they’re contributing and we expect this trend to continue.”

Connecticut relies heavily on an aging disposal infrastructure through which the majority of solid waste is incinerated to generate energy. With the 2022 closure of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) facility in Hartford, up to 40% of the state’s solid waste is shipped to out-of-state landfills. The Connecticut’s Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy (CMMS) goals to reduce waste and increase reuse, recycling and composting, while also creating stable, predictable, environmentally sound and self-sufficient waste disposal options are supported through the food scrap collection and unit-based pricing waste diversion pilots.

According to Connecticut’s most recent waste characterization study, 41% of what Connecticut residents throw away is organic material—e.g., food scraps, and yard waste—that can be composted, converted to energy through anaerobic digestion or processed into animal feed. Food scraps alone represent 22% of residential trash. Food scraps are one of the heavier materials regularly thrown away at the residential level and removing food scraps from the waste stream reduces the costs of disposal as municipalities pay by weight. Collecting inedible food can be used to produce energy and soil amendments and should be seen as a resource to capture, not something to dispose of.

More information on the program can be found at https://www.middletownct.gov/201/Sanitation-Division and https://www.middletownct.gov/1272/Feed-The-Earth-Middletown.

https://www.middletownct.gov/201/Sanitation-Division https://www.middletownct.gov/1272/Feed-The-Earth-Middletown

Municipal Building; 245 deKoven Drive, Middletown, Connecticut 06457Phone: 860-638-4801 Fax: 860-638-1901 E-mail: Mayor@MiddletownCT.gov

Copyright 2022, City of Middletown, CT245 deKoven Drive, Middletown, CT 06457

This press release was produced by the City of Middletown. The views expressed here are the author’s own.