Content excerpted and adapted from a Petoskey News article. Read the article and listen to the full podcast here.
Emmet County's Department of Public Works and recycling program in Harbor Springs launched a new effort to encourage county residents to reduce the amount of food waste they send to the landfill.
Content excerpted and adapted from a Petoskey News article. Read the article and listen to the full podcast here.
Emmet County's Department of Public Works and recycling program in Harbor Springs launched a new effort to encourage county residents to reduce the amount of food waste they send to the landfill.
Their Give All Food a Future campaign, supported by the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation, is aimed at educating people about how 40 percent of food goes to waste or landfills and ways to prevent that.
“In an anaerobic environment, items like cardboard and paper are decomposing at such a fast rate. The methane is being generated and released almost immediately in that type of environment,” Lindsey Walker from Emmet County Recycling told the newspaper. “Food scraps and food waste are also very nitrogen-rich. They also produce a copious amount of methane and get released almost immediately out a landfill-type environment.”
The department says the campaign provides kitchen caddies to residents with information about how they can reduce their food waste.
“In the kitchen caddies, we ask those that are interested to sign a food waste reduction pledge that they and their families are going to say, ‘ok, we're going to attack this by maybe planning our meals appropriately, or shopping differently, or we're going to start the joys of back composting. Or we'll use one of your drop-off sites,’ if you can't compost outdoors because you live in a condominium or a homeowner's association,” Walker said.
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