An Albany County town is expanding its food scraps composting program.
A ceremony marking the official opening of a new “drop spot” for food scraps composting at a special shed for that purpose may not sound like a big deal. But the town of Bethlehem has been on a “greener path” for some time, and some residents actually brought food scraps to the ribbon-cutting.
Bethlehem Recycling and Composting Department head Dan Rain says the town debuted the region's first municipal composting system in April 2022, and hasn’t looked back. "It's working well," said Rain. "Yeah, it was it was two years ago this spring, when we started our aerated static pile method for composting food scraps and the program has really been growing. We have two zones and we're about to add a third and we're also just taking in more and more food scraps from both residential and commercial customers as interest grows."
The new “drop spot” is at the St. Thomas the Apostle Church parking lot off Delaware Avenue. It opens almost a year after the town’s drop-off option launched last May at the Compost Facility in Selkirk. Rain says the original pilot program for 30 households is expanding.
“I'm getting two to five calls a day right now, from people that want to join the program. We have over 70, probably 75 households now registered for the program, including the 21 households, part of this parish, that piloted the location here at this wonderful shed,” Rain said.
Bethlehem utilizes composting to divert organics from the local landfill. Democratic Supervisor David VanLuven says that cuts down on emissions.
"One of the things that we're fortunate to have are our community organizations and organizations of faith like St. Thomas the Apostle church, who not only work to make our communities stronger, but also try to make us more environmentally responsible," VanLuven said. "And the church has stepped up in a huge way to work with Dan Rain and our recycling and composting department to open a food scraps composting drop spot so people can keep their food scraps out of landfills where they just generate greenhouse gas, and put them into our state of the art composting facility where they're turned into garden gold compost."
The town offers composting accessories. Rain says program participants can purchase a 2-gallon kitchen container and a 6-gallon transport container to collect and transport food scraps.
“So I just wanted to show off just a little bit, kind of what we're talking about here," Rain said as he shuffled materials. "So folks can see we're taking this, which is, you know, your banana peels and your tea bags and your orange rinds, and your even your compostable paper napkins and whatnot. And we compost it with time and care and help with those beneficial microbes, which make it all possible, into a wonderful soil amendment, rich compost. And compost helps us build and maintain healthy soils, which is vital to growing healthy plants and having a healthy planet, people on the planet.”
Rain says the town offers a variety of compost and wood mulch products that locals can either shovel and bag for free or pay a resident rate to get loaded material or bagged 40-pound bag material for their home gardens. Area landscapers and other customers are able to purchase material in bulk, by the truckload. Rain notes Bethlehem's annual backyard composter and rain barrel sale continues through April 19.
“You can order online, preorder online, and you can pick up your composters accessories, rain barrels, sustainability things items at our Spring Recycle Fest on Saturday, April 20th, said Rain. "So that's the first option. And we've been doing that for five years now. And I also offer free classes through the Parks and Rec Department on backyard composting, free advice throughout the year on troubleshooting and education. So it's DIY but with support from the town, is one option. The second option, which has been here for a number of years as well, is contracting as by subscription through Dianna Wrights’ Foodscraps360 company. You get the convenience of curbside service, and that material is all brought to our compost facility for processing. The customers also get some of the beautiful results, the compost, and now in our sustainable burlap, drawstring reusable compostable bags.”
In keeping with the recyclable philosophy, VanLuven and Rain joined in the ribbon cutting, actually a “vine cutting” so that even the “ribbon” could be composted.
