Study moves city closer to mandatory composting
A composting study being conducted as part of Mayor Steve Noble’s push to make the practice mandatory in the city is expected to be finalized in the spring.
Summer Smith, the city’s director of communications and community engagement, said a draft report should be completed in April, followed by a final version in May.
Noble, a staunch environmentalist, says mandatory composting would save the city a significant amount on its $1 million annual cost of hauling trash.
Last fall, Noble said the city had “concluded direct outreach to businesses about the interest [in] and feasibility [of composting], as well as posted and gathered dozens of residential compost survey responses.”
“We have conducted waste sorts at parks, events and municipal buildings,” he said at the time. “We’ll pull all this information together into a report that evaluates curbside composting options for the city.”
During his campaign last year, the Democratic mayor said mandatory citywide composting would be likely if he won re-election, which he did by a wide margin.
Noble told the Freeman last year that the state is gearing up to adopt its own composting program by 2030, so it makes sense for the city to get a jump and save money at the same time.
Early estimates are the city could cut its trashhauling costs by 30 percent if mandatory composting is instituted.
Toward that end, the report to be released in the spring will address how a Kingston composting program could be developed. Noble said research has included “digging” through city trash to determine how much compostable material was being tossed out.
The composting study, funded by a $63,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate Smart Communities Implementation Program, will be used to create the Kingston Organic Waste Management Plan.
According to a press release about the grant, the organic waste management plan will include a waste management strategy for government-hosted or government-permitted events; organics collection and composting in government buildings; a government waste audit and diversion tracking; a compost bin distribution plan; and a determination about the feasibility of an organics collection program at both residential and commercial properties.