An initiative to reduce food waste on the Vineyard and increase access to composting for residents and students is gaining traction.
The Island Grown Initiative, through a Vineyard Vision Fellowship, has been working with town and school officials across the Island to build small-scale, food-waste recyclers at each town’s local trash drop-off station and at all seven Island schools.
On Wednesday this past week, the West Tisbury Select Board threw its support behind putting an article on its spring town meeting warrant that would fund a so-called “EcoRich food waste recycler,” what project proponents say could turn some 600 pounds of food waste a week into nutrient-rich soil; Oak Bluffs and Edgartown are also in the process of purchasing similar food-waste recyclers; the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and Chilmark School have secured funding for systems; and a machine has been ordered and is on route to the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School.
“We are trying to meet everyone where they are at, at every level,” said Sophie Mazza, community food waste educator with IGI. Mazza is working on the project through a three-year Vision Fellowship. She said that this small-scale composting equipment is part of a larger picture of saving taxpayers’ money by reducing food waste as well as the number of trips required to get trash to the mainland.
There’s an estimated 8,000 tons of food waste generated on the Vineyard each year, or about 16-million pounds; Mazza said about 75 percent of that comes from residential properties. With processors at each town transfer station and school, Mazza believes they could begin to reduce that number.
“All of the trash, and the food waste mixed in, goes off-Island, it all gets burned in an incinerator. And then at the same time, we’re shipping thousands of yards of compost back onto the Island every year,” Mazza told the West Tisbury Select Board on Wednesday. “It’s an inefficient system, and it’s also a climate problem.”
A larger piece of the waste stream equation is more large-scale operations. Mazza and other waste officials are looking for space on the Island to operate two, large-scale compost facilities that would take a larger chunk out of the stream. That would include local restaurants, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, and other commercial enterprises.
While there has been great interest in commercial-scale processing, finding large open pieces of land that are zoned for industry and aren’t in a flight path — as is the case for one proposed area at the Edgartown transfer station — has proven difficult. There was hope the Edgartown transfer station would work, but Mazza said that it is in a flight path.
Waste and town officials across the Island have been working on a solution since the only large-scale composter, which was a pilot program on Island Grown Initiative’s farm in Vineyard Haven, was forced to close at the end of last summer. The pilot program processed over three million tons of food waste and demonstrated the feasibility and need, but the old in-drum food processing machine couldn’t keep up with the continuously growing demand.
Without many options, Vineyard residents have been forced to either pay more to get rid of their trash or compost in their yards, which can invite pests, as was noted by West Tisbury Select Board members last week.
“I think more and more of us are now dumping our compost on the ground, or dumping our compost in the trash, which isn’t great in terms of rat control,” select board member Jessica Miller said. “So, I think this is a great option.” She said that the public has been clamoring for a place to deal with their food waste, especially since the IGI pilot program ended and was supportive of the proposal.
The EcoRich processor that would be built in West Tisbury is a stainless-steel rectangle that is eight-feet long, five-feet tall and three-feet wide. As to how it would work, residents drop off their food waste into a receptacle before staff at the trash station would tip the food waste into the machine using an auto-loader. At the push of a button, food waste inside the machine is chopped up, processed, dehydrated, and 24-hours later, it is reduced in volume by about 90 percent. From there, the waste is cured for three weeks before it can be used as a nutrient-rich soil.
If it was run every day at full capacity, that would be 109,000 pounds of food waste that it could process throughout the year, though Mazza said that would be unlikely given that the trash dump-off area is not open 24/7.
The equipment and installation is expected to cost $67,000, which includes operational costs and roughly $5,000 due to fees imposed by tariffs. The town could consider charging a minimal fee for the soil to make up for some of the costs.
After some discussion, the board supported a possible warrant article for the 2026 town meeting warrant, though did not formalize a cost for the project.
This initiative is more than a logistical fix — it’s a smart, local solution with real environmental, economic, and cultural benefits.
Food waste accounts for 58 percent of landfill methane emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and methane is more than 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
By processing even part of the Island’s estimated 8,000 tons of annual food waste locally, Vineyard towns can make a meaningful dent in their climate impact.
Producing compost on-Island would reduce the thousands of cubic yards currently imported each year, while improving soil health and water retention for local farms. Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows compost-amended soils hold 20–40 percent more water — a critical advantage as rainfall becomes less predictable.
Other Massachusetts towns have seen annual household savings of $25–50 through reduced tipping fees and fewer barge trips. And with processors planned for every Island school, this program will help shape lasting habits, aligning the Vineyard with statewide goals to cut food waste in half by 2030 and setting a clear example of forward-thinking, community-led action.
I’m a summer resident but I would love to recycle our organic waste.
The city I live in, Berkeley CA, ,has city wide collection of compost in our green bins, more than just kitchen waste.
In any case, it is all collected and composted. The compost is free for residents to use on their gardens. Maybe talk to the folks who run it. It is also a not for profit business run by the Ecology Center that does all our garbage. They have really good recycling, cleaner than most cities so they can sell it. I suggest contacting the City of Berkeley Trash and Recycling program.
Island wide programs make lots of sense for trash.
So tell me how the current process is inefficient. We send our food waste off island on a full tractor trailer to an environmentally green energy plant and then return compost on said vehicle. Most of the tractor trailers that transport goods to the island return to the mainland empty. The current process minimizes this wasteful process having full trailers in both directions. We don’t have now, and will never have, the space for a full capacity composting area and even if we did the amount of food waste compost would far exceed what the island needs and we would end up shipping the excess off island anyhow. And yes, I have studied this for more than 20 years.
I hear you — you make a fair point about the efficiency of sending full trailers off-Island and returning them with compost, and that’s certainly better than sending empty trucks.
But the current system still has built-in inefficiencies that the local initiative is designed to chip away at.
For one, even if the trailers are full in both directions, hauling food waste hundreds of miles to be incinerated still generates significant emissions, and incineration doesn’t return organic matter to the soil — it burns it.
The compost we truck back in is produced elsewhere, using someone else’s resources, then shipped over again, adding another energy step to the cycle.
In addition, local processing doesn’t need to be “full capacity” to make a difference. The small-scale processors planned for transfer stations and schools aim to divert a meaningful fraction of residential waste right here, cutting both hauling needs and emissions.
And producing even part of our compost locally improves soil health and resilience while giving communities more control over their own waste stream — which is valuable even if some material still goes off-Island.
In other words, it’s not an all-or-nothing replacement; it’s a strategic supplement that makes the overall system cleaner and more self-reliant.
Shipping it off island and then returning it is more efficient?
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