Town hopes to get more food out of waste stream

The Town Board has appointed Mary McNamara to coordinate an organics recycling program at the town transfer station.

McNamara said the program is intended to reduce the amount of solid waste brought to the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency.

“Ideally, people would have a clean, dedicated container, a five-gallon bucket or something like that, that they put all of their food waste in,” she said. “It’s a pretty simple, straightforward approach, low-tech approach, to reducing the amount of household waste that the transfer station has to deal with.”

The Saugerties program is to be carried out with the help of of New Paltz-based Community Composting Co., which estimates about 20 percent of solid waste sent to landfills consists of food waste that could be composted.

MacNamara said Saugerties will pay $309.60 for Community Composting to pick up four bins of food waste four times per month.

Saugerties officials estimate the town sends about 965 tons of solid waste per year to the county Resource Recovery Agency at a cost of $103 per ton.

“You have close to $100,000 that you’re spending on taking garbage” to the county agency, MacNamara said. “If you reduce it by even just a few percentage [points], you’re saving money.”

The Saugerties program will not begin until bins designed to keep bears out are purchased for the transfer station.

MacNamara said the program already is in place in Woodstock, which is one of the reasons Community Composting is able to offer pickups in Saugerties.