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Food waste diversion program planned at Falls Village station

Food waste diversion program planned at Falls Village station
The team at the Falls Village transfer station is ready to help residents separate food scraps from regular household garbage. From left, Demetri Ouelette, Peter Roussis and Tracey Wilson. 
Photo by Patrick L. Sullivan

FALLS VILLAGE — A food waste diversion program is coming to the Falls Village transfer station.

Transfer station coordinator Tracey Wilson got the go-ahead from the Board of Selectmen at the latter’s Jan. 9 meeting.

The goal is to get food waste out of the municipal solid waste stream, Wilson told the selectmen.

Food waste is heavy and contains a significant amount of water.

Now that Falls Village and other Northwest Corner towns are no longer shipping waste to the now-closed waste-to-energy plant in Hartford, the garbage is being shipped out of state for disposal in landfills, an expensive and environmentally unfriendly proposition.

Removing the heavy food waste will lessen the shipping cost, Wilson told the selectmen.

Wilson elaborated during an interview at the transfer station Saturday, Jan. 14.

She said the program will get started in March.

The program will not require anyone to sign up, unlike a similar program at the Salisbury-Sharon transfer station.

The transfer station will provide compostable bags for residents to get started. The bags are available at area stores.

And between now and March, Wilson said the transfer station will provide information for residents on what goes in the bags and what doesn’t.

The food waste will be collected by Curbside Compost, a company that collects food waste and turns it into compost.

Wilson said she thinks “there will be a learning curve” as residents settle into the new routine. “It will take a little time to get used to it.”

Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.

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