Pilot program to offer composting for residents, local businesses

Ferndale is getting ready to offer composting services for a limited number of residents and businesses with a new pilot program getting underway next month.

“Participation is limited to 250 residents,” said Ferndale City Manager Joseph Gacioch. “And a number of businesses can sign up as well.”

The first 250 residents to register will get a 5-gallon bucket with a lid, a sticker label displaying the list of acceptable food waste, and a guide listing information about the program.

Registration to take part in the effort will open on the city’s website Oct. 11, said Claire Dion, the city’s Zero Waste Program coordinator. The first residents to sign up will get an email letting them know the details.

Participants will pick up their buckets and other materials at a two-hour event from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Oct. 20 in the City Hall parking lot

Gacioch said Ann Arbor offers composting for residents, but he is unaware of any other communities in the region that offer the service.

“We’re also looking to see how businesses would use composting if it were available,” he said. “We’d have a downtown pickup area and four residential drop-off areas.”

City Council members are expected to discuss where to locate those areas at their meeting today.

Dion recently got a matching grant to fund half the cost of the $21,000 composting effort, Gacioch said.

“We want to test community composting because a substantial portion of food waste goes into landfills,” he said. “As all that food decomposes it produces high volumes of methane and other gases.”

Experts say methane, a greenhouse gas, contributes to global climate change. President Joe Biden last week called on world leaders to take part in reducing methane gas emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030. Food waste collected in Ferndale will be taken to a certified composting facility.

Acceptable items to be composted include fruit and vegetables, raw and cooked meat, bones, dairy products, baked goods, pasta, fats and sugars, greasy pizza boxes, paper towels and napkins.

During the year-long pilot program officials will monitor use of the composting sites, the tonnage collected, contamination issues and the cost.

An associated program is expected to be recommended next year.

Residents will also be asked to give feedback on the upcoming pilot program as it progresses.

“We’re orienting the staffing around sustainability efforts like this,” Gacioch said.

Composting is seen as a sustainable alternative to throwing out compostable food and other items in the garbage, which ends up in landfills.

Food waste, and other qualified compostable material, can be turned into healthy soil once it is composted.

Residents are encouraged to compost at home if possible because it is a more sustainable process than a drop-off or curbside program and reduces the need for transport.

Residents with questions are asked to contact Dion, the Zero Waste Coordinator, at zerowaste@ferndalemi.gov