Embedded Files
Green Ellsworth Partners with Chickadee Compost for Community Composting Pilot Project
Green Ellsworth Partners with Chickadee Compost for Community Composting Pilot Project
Chickadee Compost, Green Ellsworth and the Ellsworth School District Food Services Program are partnering to offer a pilot food scrap collection service for Ellsworth residents. Starting immediately all residents in neighborhoods encompassed within the pilot project area (mapped loop including the Surry Road, Main Street, Oak Street, Christian Ridge Road, and Route 1—from Christian Ridge to Surry Road) can sign up for weekly curbside food scrap pickups, which will start in October.
The first 50 households to sign up will receive a free 4-gallon lidded compost bucket.
Additionally, residents inside or outside this service area may sign up for depositing their food scraps at a drop-off shed at Fogtown Brewery (25 Pine Street), and at further drop-off locations to be rolled out as the pilot project unfolds.
Chickadee Compost will also be rolling out phased compost collection at all three Ellsworth Schools.
All types of food, including meat, shellfish, and dairy can be composted. Households participating in curbside pickup will put their lidded buckets out curbside each Wednesday morning by 9 am, and their buckets will be dumped into bins during the day. To keep buckets clean, we encourage use of a paper bag or newspaper as a liner for the bucket.
The cost of the curbside service is $20 per month per household, or $235 if paid annually. Free buckets will be distributed to households September 24th, with weekly pickups commencing on October 1st. The cost for drop-off collection at Fogtown Brewing is $15 per month per household.
Anyone who signs up after the first 50 will have the option of buying a Chickadee Compost 4 gallon bucket for $12, or they are welcome to use their own from home, as long as it has a tightly fitted lid.
All households participating in either the curbside pick up or Fogtown drop-off locations will have the option of receiving a free 5-gallon bag of finished compost each spring and fall.
Chickadee Compost is a community composting company based in Surry. They currently serve 170 households on the Blue Hill peninsula and on MDI, and provide food scrap collection services for local restaurants, schools, Blue Hill hospital, Fogtown Brewing, Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, and other local food related businesses and organizations. Since 2022, they have composted 1.5 million pounds of food scraps in our region, and sold hundreds of yards of high quality compost for local farms and gardens throughout Hancock County.
Green Ellsworth’s Waste Management Action Team is organizing this pilot in conjunction with its broader mandate to reduce both the amount of waste produced within our city and the expense associated with waste disposal. Our goal is to shift the 40% of our waste which is composed of food scraps and organics out of our waste stream (and out of trucking long distance to landfills or incineration) to the more productive creation of compost by a local business. The goal is to transform what was previously “trash” into healthy soil and locally grown food. See the Wasted Food Scale diagram below to learn how you can help reduce the environmental impact of wasted food.
Map of Curbside Collection Service Area
Why are we organizing a Composting Pilot Project?
Why are we organizing a Composting Pilot Project?
This project responds directly to objectives for improving the city’s long term sustainability and specific recommendations in Green Ellsworth’s Green Plan for the City of Ellsworth. It also responds to two key areas of focus in ”Maine Won't Wait,” the state's four-year climate action plan, which emphasizes the importance of strengthening Maine's local food systems and raising the percentage of food from Maine producers consumed within the state. It also calls for a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030.
Studies have shown that food scraps and other organic matter make up 40% of Maine’s waste which in turn incurs considerable expense for long-distance trucking and disposal in landfills or incineration. Composting locally is a higher, more sustainable and cost effective solution Composting is not new. It was used by Indigenous people and early settlers to enrich the soil and grow more food. Located in Surry, Chickadee Compost is eliminating the need for longer distance trucking costs while transforming so-called waste into a productive commodity to support local, more sustainable food production. Composting is a key component of a healthy, circular food system.
Thanks to this project we should learn more about what it would take to develop an ongoing city-wide composting stream across the city and what the sustainability benefits might be from a larger scale intervention.
Why is the Ellsworth School Districts Food Services Program involved?
Why is the Ellsworth School Districts Food Services Program involved?
Education is critical to the successful implementation of any community composting project, and that is why partnership with the Ellsworth School District is so important—not simply teaching school children about the why’s, what’s and how’s of composting, but more broadly enabling them to participate in strengthening and filling important gaps in our local food system. Food Rescue Maine, a project of the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine led by Susanne Lee, has helped to introduce school composting projects in several Maine schools. They will work with us and the Ellsworth schools to assure a successful phased rollout of composting in each of the three schools and effective integration of this activity into broader education about local food systems.
Educating students will inevitably help to educate parents and get them excited about this pilot project as well, and ultimately these same students will become the next generation of residential and commercial property owners who will understand the importance of composting to a healthy food system.
Piles of compost and loading. (Photos by Chickadee Compost)
Report abuse