State environmental officials are preparing to ban hospitals, universities, hotels, large restaurants, and other big businesses and institutions in Massachusetts from discarding food waste in the trash beginning in 2014, a measure that in coming years they hope to extend to homes as well.
Officials said the proposed rules, designed to save space in landfills and reduce emissions of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, will make Massachusetts the first state with such a comprehensive prohibition on commercial food waste.
Their immediate goal is to divert a third of the nearly 1.4 million tons of organic waste produced every year in Massachusetts from landfills by the end of the decade. Instead, it would go to composting sites and a new generation of specially designed plants that convert waste into energy, heat, and fertilizer.
State officials said they want to begin diverting household waste to the new plants by the end of the decade.
“This is clearly one of the most ambitious plans of its kind in the country,’’ said Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council, a Washington-based group that represents the industry.
State officials envision a new, parallel waste system that would have its own transportation network to deliver the organic waste – which includes refuse such as weeds and manure – to a host of so-called anaerobic digesters. Those plants, one of which already exists on a farm in Rutland, convert methane from degraded food into power that feeds into the region’s electrical grid. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, is contained by the plants.
Source: The Boston Globe
By David Abel