Newton City Councilor Alison Leary had a column in the TAB last week outlining the challenges –and costs, monetary and environmental — of trash removal.
Newton has four more years on its five-year contract with Waste Management, Inc. Now is the time to start planning for a truly sustainable approach to solid waste practices. With landfills closing and a ban on new [Wheelabrator Saugus waste to energy] facilities, we can anticipate paying higher fees in the future, as well as dealing with the significant environmental and public health costs that are associated with burning and burying the majority of our solid waste.
The city really needs to look hard at curbside composting… My wife and I have a good amount of recycling each week (still only enough to put the wheely bin out once a month or so) but very little trash (13 gal bag every 4 weeks or so, total) and of that trash 95% is plastic film and packaging. However, if we didn’t have the compost bin at our house (and I didn’t work in a community with municipal composting for bones) our trash production would be quite a lot higher (and a lot smellier). its typically about 1/3 of the trash stream.
Working to tell people (esp new residents) that plastic bags are not allowed in the recycling needs to continue, I think the sticker campaign that Green Newton ran 2 years ago now worked very well, but more needs to be done.
There are communities that offer bone composting ?