As 2020 comes in on little cat feet as poet Carl Sandburg said of fog Vermonters have something to feel good about. We have made progress, and will make further progress, on two issues of importance to our environment.

Act 148, the states Universal Recycling & Composting Law, was passed by the Legislature in 2012, and imposed a graduated waste-management regime, not just on our institutions and business but on citizens as well, which will reach its fruition on July 1. Vermonters will be required to take responsibility not only for our cardboard, cans, bottles and plastic, as weve been doing, but for our food scraps, too.

The goal is to keep them out of the Coventry, Vermont, landfill (owned and operated by Rutland-based Casella Waste Systems Inc.). Its the only landfill in the state accepting new deposits, but it cant be called Vermonts only active landfill, because most of the shuttered ones are active in the sense that decomposition continues for decades below the surface, generating methane, the potent greenhouse gas.

Also, July 1 will mark the introduction of S.113, signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott last June. It has been hailed as the most comprehensive set of restrictions on food-related single-use plastic products (primarily supermarket bags, plastic drinking straws and polystyrene containers) in the U.S. Truthfully, thats a sad distinction because there is so much plastic and micro-plastic in our environment, with enormous amounts added each day, that more severe steps must be taken. For now, though, well celebrate the approach of S.113.

Act 148 was created to drastically reduce the amount of organic waste thats sent up to Coventry. As Michele Morris, of the Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD), reports in Green Energy Times, we sent more than 80,000 tons of food and food scraps to the landfill in 2018; such materials account annually for 25% to 30%, by weight, of all the refuse taken in.

Moist organics like discarded food are also the materials that get the gaseous ball rolling (or roiling) within the depths of the landfill, because they decompose more readily than most of the other content. Thats the process that produces methane.

Large-quantity food-scrap producers such as restaurants and hospitals were required to begin diverting their food waste in 2014 if they generated an average of more than 2 tons per week and were located within 20 miles of a certified processor (such as a composting or anaerobic digesting facility). In 2015, that requirement was broadened to include establishments that generated an average of 1 ton a week. In 2016, it was reduced to half a ton a week, and that annual pattern has continued. Six months from now on July 1, 2020 the law will apply to household food scraps, with (quoting the Department of Environmental Conservation) no exemption for distance

The DECs website provides suggestions to help people comply with the law. One is to shop smarter, to reduce food waste and your grocery bill. Other ideas include backyard composting for organic matter that includes yard debris, sawdust, woodchips and leaves, along with food scraps, to create compost usable for gardens and plantings.

Importantly, the DEC makes this distinction: (I)ts OK to throw meat, bones and grease in the trash those items dont break down quickly in small-scale compost systems. (In central Vermont, the Additional Recycling Collection Center in Barre accepts such scraps.)

Theres great promise in Act 148. The DEC explains that if we can capture just 50% of the recyclables now going to the landfill ... we could eliminate upwards of 85,000 metric tons of [carbon dioxide] per year, the equivalent of taking 17,708 cars off the road.

Yet its also important to note that Vermont has an advantage with its landfill not enjoyed by most other states. Its a source of renewable electricity. Washington Electric Cooperative, which serves 10,600 member-households, schools, businesses and institutions in parts of Washington, Orange, Lamoille and Caledonia counties, owns generating facilities adjacent to the landfill that are fueled by captured methane. The power then travels over 11 miles of transmission lines to a VELCO substation, and is loaded onto the statewide electric grid.

On average, the co-op produces the equivalent of 53% of its members electricity in this way, supplying some 8,000 homes and buildings. In other locations, such as Baltimore, trash-to-energy incinerators produce unwanted gases, making them less than ideal as renewable-energy sources. Washington Electrics partnership with Casella has no such drawback.

So, welcome, 2020. Vermont will use the year ahead to reduce its cumulative strain upon the environment, and that will be a good thing.

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