Updated Nov. 22
Oak Bluffs is ramping up its efforts to handle food waste generated in town, agreeing to pursue a multimillion-dollar grant to build a commercial-scale food processing plant as well as to look into starting a residential composting program.
On Tuesday, Nov. 12, the Oak Bluffs select board unanimously approved sending a letter of intent to pursue $2.25 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program to build a composting facility at the town’s transfer station. The grant would help meet state regulations requiring businesses like hospitals and restaurants to divert food waste from the trash stream.
Additionally, the board voted to refer a proposal from Island Grown Initiative (IGI) to install a rapid composter — a machine that creates soil amendment, which can be added to soil to improve its properties, through intense heat — at the town’s drop-off station to the town’s capital committee; the board noted that it favored the idea “in principle.”
The two measures follow the shutdown of the only large-scale organic waste processing program on the Island in September, which has forced more waste to be transported off-Island. The pilot program run by IGI in Vineyard Haven closed after the in-drum food processing machine couldn’t match the growing demand, and kept breaking down.
Applying for the EPA grant has been an effort nearly two years in the making, board member Emma Green-Beach said.
“This might be our last chance for this [grant] for a while,” she said, reflecting the concern of some board members that environmental funding will evaporate under the upcoming Trump presidency.
The composting service wouldn’t be for the whole Island. Woody Filley, manager of the Martha’s Vineyard Vision Fellowship Organics Project, and part of the town’s grant process, said the commercial composter would be able to handle around 1,000 tons of organic waste per year, whereas the Vineyard produces approximately 6,500 tons of food waste annually. He also said the hope is to make a more “decentralized” composting model, so it wouldn’t be just one area where businesses take their food waste.
Filley said they would also have to go out to bid for a contractor to run the facility. Oak Bluffs town administrator Deborah Potter said this would limit the costs sustained by the town.
Meanwhile, Sophie Abrams Mazza, the community food waste educator from IGI, proposed installing an EcoRich food composter at the Oak Bluffs local drop-off operation to handle residential food waste.
The machine applies heat to break down food waste, Mazza said, which then produces soil amendment that can be used in gardens. Mazza said the composter can process around 500 pounds of food waste a day, which adds up to around 90 tons annually.
Mazza emphasized that increasing on-Island composting options would bring economic and climate benefits. She said roughly 230 trucks transported food waste off-Island per year, costing money and contributing to carbon emissions.
Purchasing and installing the machine is estimated to cost $74,550, with an estimated annual maintenance cost of less than $10,312.
Mazza said the program would essentially “pay for itself” by eliminating the $10,286.25 from hauling food waste, and an additional $2,200 from the MassDEP’s recycling dividends program could be brought in. Additionally, she pointed out that the town could give the soil amendment to local farms, or sell the amendment produced.
She also said grant opportunities are being explored by IGI for the installation of the composter.
Board member Dion Alley underscored a need to make it clear on how the program would be run, whether it would be only for Oak Bluffs residents, or if it would require individuals from other towns to purchase dump stickers to access the machine.
“I know we’re an Island community, but when this is taxpayer money, I want to make sure the taxpayers are taken care of first,” he said.
Potter and Oak Bluffs assistant town administrator Wendy Brough both said alternative residential composting units should also be explored, to be “financially responsible.” The project would also require a town meeting vote.
After further discussion, the board voted to refer it to the capital committee.
Updated with clarifications from Sophie Abrams Mazza.
Sounds like a good idea—
But grinding up and drying out food waste is not
really “compost” it’s close, and given the problems
with large scale composting it’s a good alternative.
Will meat be allowed ?
What would the source of heat be for this process?
Drying 500 pounds a day could go through some petro.
Is that part of the $10,312 “maintenance” ?
Is there a solar component ?
And just curious– if they start with 500 pounds of
unprocessed waste, what is the weight of that after it’s dried ?
I give the whole idea 2 thumbs up ! !
I can’t wait for the usual suspects to tell us why it’s a bad idea.
Want to test for pfas in that compost? Doesn’t take much searching to find this is a very significant problem. Go ahead. Put it right in your sole source aquifer. Nothing to see here because we like this. BOH. Where are you when it comes to location and protecting your water supply?
I like the idea but buyer beware. Know what you are buying.
Patti– PFAS– I didn’t see that one coming.
So I looked it up. I did indeed find quite a bit about
the subject. There was one from an environmental
org that required signing up to read–I don’t need the
junk mail, so I skipped that. There were a few others that mentioned
it but didn’t say how the PFAS get int the compost to begin with.
I found a pretty good article about that which explained that
a lot of commercial compost that you can buy in bags at
garden centers. Here is a quote from the article:
“The presence of PFAS in compost is primarily linked to the use of biosolids in the composting process. Biosolids, also known as sewage sludge, are nutrient-rich organic materials derived from wastewater treatment processes. While biosolids contribute to the overall nutrient content of compost, they can also contain trace amounts of PFAS.”
Wow– I didn’t know about that– thanks for bringing it up.
So I went back and re-read the article to see if they mentioned
anything about sewage sludge in the article– There is no
mention of it. They are just going to dry out scrap food.
I don’t see where the PFAS would be coming from.
Of course, there are PFAS in packaging and food itself, but
that’s another issue. I think PFAS should be banned at that point.
Some people don’t think they are a problem at all — I do.
Dion Alley should understand that this grant money is coming from all taxpayers across the state and or country. This is not just Oak Bluffs taxpayer money. Otherwise I may agree with him. Big thanks out to Oak Bluffs for trying to access to Grant, but it needs to be an island wide Solution.
You want this done by big government?
State wide solution?
Like the idea of a decentralized composting model. It’s similar to the idea of solar on every roof. Compost in your own garden.
If we can, we should process our own compost. Since this project cannot handle all the food waste on-island, if there are individuals who can process extra food waste on their own property, perhaps we can connect these individuals with a food-waste stream. That way we don’t have to pay for removal from the island and we could use the compost locally.
Solar panels and windmills and self composting and no oil and gas and no plastic or any materials that come from Big Oil, no Pharma, no fluoride and no pesticides or weedicides. No cars just bikes and no mopeds. Sounds like the year 1900 or earlier. What a great idea to go backwards. Oh yes the dreaded climate change is an existential threat so we must do it.
Andrew, shall we ask the fair residents of Asheville if climate change is an existential threat?
Mary, I don’t know if you’ve ever read any William Styron, like “Sophie’s Choice”, but life, real life on our planet, gives us unanswerable questions in the choices we are forced to make. There is no reason to ask morally haughty questions to which you already assume the answer.
How much death and property destruction is worth saving hundreds of thousands or even millions from certain early death and extreme hardship in other places?
I don’t know is the only answer. Choices can go either way, weighing, I suppose, which is least harmful to the least number of humans. Like with Presidential elections, I imagine.
I had a life-threatening and life-altering reaction to a Covid vaccine. That does not mean all vaccines for every disease known to mankind are an exitential threat. I would not dream of telling people not to vaccinate their children for polio, or even for covid, although I was very wrong to insist everyone get a covid shot.
To those who care about lives being saved by all the politically incorrect “poisons” impacting climate/weather, food, water, geography, football fields, and our health, you can’t really blame people for caring about people depending on those “poisons” to improve so much for so many in places not like Martha’s Vineyard. Neither “side” is correct when they can’t accept there are reasons for the other side– for both sides. And both sides need work. Perspectives matter. Arrogance is not a perspective.
Composting is not really a morality contest of one-upmanship. Any more liberal moral superiority on the smelly matter makes me want to stop recycling, lol.
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