Washtenaw County will have new food scrap drop-off sites as part of a pilot program.
The Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner’s Office wants to see how much residents and businesses from communities of three different sizes—Salem Township, Dexter and Ypsilanti—would contribute to diverting food waste from the landfill.
Theo Eggermont is the county’s public works director. He says the county has found that about a third of what’s thrown away is compostable. He says encouraging people to compost would reduce methane emissions.
“It’s not something that’s at a scale where it’s going to have a large impact, but we have to start somewhere. And right now, we’re looking at how does this work and is it something that we can scale where it would have a larger impact.”
Eggermont says more drop-offs will appear in other communities in the future based on the amount of material brought in during the pilot program.
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