Greenburgh To Discuss Food Scrap Recycling At Upcoming Meeting

GREENBURGH, NY — The town of Greenburgh will discuss at an upcoming meeting community responses to a survey about how people could increase food scrap recycling and decrease garbage production.

Supervisor Paul Feiner said the town is considering a trial transition to one-day-a-week garbage collection with the second day substituted for curbside food scrap pickup.

An alternative approach could include increasing public food scrap waste bin sites around town, he said. Greenburgh was the second community in Westchester to place food scrap waste bins at municipal sites. In recent years, the town has placed bins at Veteran Park and at the Greenburgh Town Hall.

“We feel we’re not doing enough,” Feiner said, “and want to expand the initiative.”

He said the idea is that if you start separating your food waste you will find that your regular trash output is greatly reduced by as much as 25 percent if not higher.

“Once people start composting, they create much less trash,” Feiner said, “and bring the town closer to the 0.6 pounds/person/day statewide goal of trash generation.”

Another benefit, he said, was, when recycling, reusing and composting efficiently, one’s “trash” is reduced to mostly dry and lightweight waste which can be collected in one’s home in a brown paper bag, reducing the need to further plastic bag waste that gets incinerated, producing toxic ash.

The town wants residents to weigh in about how they feel about changing the weekly garbage pickup schedule to one regular garbage pickup and one for just food scraps.

Greenburgh residents can take this online survey.

The discussion will take place during the Greenburgh Town Board work session May 16.