"Hamilton becomes first Mass. town to mandate composting; Efforts to collect food waste are ramping up around the state, for environmental and business reasons" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, February 21, 2021
Gretel Clark has spent the last few decades of her 84 years on a mission to save the planet, starting with the trash-disposal habits of her town of Hamilton. This month, thanks largely to her efforts, the town became the first in the state to mandate composting for all its residents.
The program puts Hamilton on par with cities like San Francisco and Seattle, as well as the State of Vermont, which rolled out a statewide composting mandate last year.
The changes come at a critical moment, as municipalities across the state wage war against waste and people spend more time at home — and thus create more trash.
Everything in my paper is framed as a war, and the only way to solve the problem will be to cull the people creating the trash, right?
Pulling organic material like table scraps out of the waste stream makes trash weigh less, which means towns and cities could pay less to have it hauled away, and diverting organics is better for the planet: Putting those materials back into the earth through composting helps plants pull more carbon from the air and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, which combats climate change.
“Quite frankly, it’s a very simple thing to ask people to do,” Clark said. “We’re not doing something revolutionary.”
It always sounds good, but should it be mandated tyranny in a free society when it is supporter the overarching goal of oligarchic control?
Environmental advocates say Clark’s mindfulness could be the way of the future, if Hamilton’s mandate propels more municipalities to follow suit.
“If you look at the pie chart of what gets disposed of in Massachusetts, something like 28 percent of what we’re sending to incinerators is food and organics. It’s insanity,” said Janet Domenitz, executive director of the advocacy group MassPIRG.
“We should divert all organics from disposal, period, end of sentence. It’s not like we have to figure something out; we know how to do this, and we just need to commit to the infrastructure that makes it happen,” but building that infrastructure is easier said than done, particularly because the state’s waste-removal industry has been tested this past year. Industry trade publications reported that, nationally, residential trash tonnage volumes surged up to 20 percent in spring and summer last year due to panic buying and home-decluttering. Those numbers have leveled off to a 5 to 10 percent increase now, but waste disposal’s a significant financial burden for many towns.
Boston has seen a 6.6 percent increase in trash, and Somerville has told the state Department of Environmental Protection that its solid waste has increased 4 percent. The Cape and the Berkshires have seen a spike in trash tonnage, too, as a result of second-home owners setting up more permanent residences during the pandemic.
The ruling cla$$ is literally shitting all over us as they cause the very problem they decry while robbing you of love, life, and freedom.
Ed Coletta, a DEP spokesman, said the state is currently conducting its annual survey to get a sense of just how much additional trash has been created during COVID-19 and will incorporate the findings in its 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan. In the meantime, he hailed Hamilton’s willingness to roll out its composting program. “Hamilton is right up there on the tip of the spear,” said Conor Miller, cofounder of Black Earth Compost, a composter and hauler on the North Shore. (It isn’t doing business with the town.)
Black Earth’s revenues have doubled during the pandemic, Miller said, as more municipalities have begun looking to offset the sharp spike in trash fees by having their citizens pay his composting service to collect their kitchen scraps. In the past year, towns like Belmont, Brookline, and Newton have contracted with Black Earth as a “preferred vendor,” helping to drive down the fees per household, but creating a town mandate, he said, puts a lot of politicians on edge. “The towns are too nervous. If they start paying for something, it kind of becomes an entitlement and really hard to reverse,” Miller said.
More $elf-$erving $lop pu$hed by the Globe after you get through the o$ten$ible altrui$m.
This is $ickening and makes one want to vomit.
It helps that Hamilton has been on the cutting edge of compost collection for some time.
It’s part of what pushed Clark to advocate for mandatory composting.
“I just kept thinking, heck, all we have to do is say ‘Do it!’ ” Clark said matter-of-factly, but she knew that giving her neighbors the option was not enough. So Clark and her team crafted the new mandate: If you want your trash picked up, you also have to drag your compost bin to the curb. (At-home composters can get a special exemption sticker on their garbage bins.)
Those who fail to bring their compost out will get a notification reminding them new collection rules are in place. By May, the town will stopping picking up trash if compost isn’t alongside it.
It’s going to be a learning curve for some folks, said Clark, who has been fielding complaints about dragging an additional bin to the curb, and there are concerns that mandating compost collection means some people may just fill their bins with more trash.
“This could get really dirty really quick,” said James Gist, chief financial officer at Brick Ends Farm, where the town’s compost will be sorted. “I don’t think the Town of Hamilton will have that problem, but I think you try to scale this and you might see a few more issues,” but Gist credits Clark’s tenacity and believes that if there’s any trouble, she’ll straighten it out. “Gretel is the genius behind it all. She’s a sharp lady,” he said.
For Clark, the imperative to compost is clear:
“It’s one of the few ways that people here in this town can take a step to help reduce global warming. Lots of other towns are now calling me and saying ‘How can we do that?’ ”
PFFFFFFFFFT!
As for my scraps, we have fattest squirrels around and they eat well.
Related:
Also see:
"A Boston executive has been picked for the United Nations’ top environmental award, the “Champions of the Earth.” Ceres chief executive Mindy Lubber is one of six recipients from around the world this year, the UN announced on Thursday. In the announcement, the UN said Lubber is being recognized in the “Entrepreneurial Vision” category for her commitment to mobilizing investors and companies to become more environmentally friendly. The UN also cited the work Lubber did to catalyze business support for the carbon emissions accord known as the Paris Agreement five years ago. Lubber leads a nonprofit whose mission, in part, is to make the business case for climate action and sustainability. This year’s “Champions” were selected from more than 1,500 nominees submitted during an annual public nominating process."
Ceres chief executive Mindy Lubber was cited for the work she did to catalyze business support for the carbon emissions accord known as the Paris Agreement (Erik Jacobs/for The Boston Globe/File 2015)
Now she has a new platform to spin her noxious theories.
"The US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday embraced tougher action to combat climate change through carbon taxes, emissions caps, or other “market-based” policies — the latest shift by the nation’s biggest business lobbying group as it pivots to a Washington dominated by Democrats. In an updated position statement being released Tuesday, the Chamber of Commerce says it supports “durable climate policy” that is made by Congress, including “a market-based approach to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions across the US economy.” The group is also preparing to announce its support for using federal regulations to directly limit oil and gas industry emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas."
Related:
"Exxon Mobil has already upped its climate plans, only three months into an activist investor’s campaign to force change inside the company. Now the group, Engine No. 1, is pushing the oil giant to set a new goal: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Engine No. 1 released a letter on Monday reiterating its call for Exxon to overhaul its board of directors by adding four new members who have the expertise to steer the company towards climate neutrality. That’s a goal already adopted by European oil producers such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total. Exxon and fellow US supermajor Chevron have resisted."
We will soon look like France, complete with horse $hit:
"Revenue at the Cambridge company grew 12 percent last year, enabling it to clear the $1 billion threshold for the first time. Pega, as it’s widely known as now, celebrated the milestone with a ceremonial “bell ringing” to open the Nasdaq market on Monday. There’s no actual bell anymore, and the event took place online for obvious reasons, although it was also broadcast on the Nasdaq’s jumbo screen in New York’s Times Square......"
Going to need a new warehouse, too, after the deal, and watch where you walk:
"Boston Dynamics’ famed Spot robot is generating some controversy online, and there’s nothing the Waltham-based company can do to stop it. A street-art company in New York called MSCHF has purchased one of the four-legged, $75,000 robots and mounted a paintball gun on its back. On Wednesday, MSCHF will hold an online event called “Spot’s Rampage,” which will put the armed robot inside an art gallery......"
They should be barking about the "watchdog" sniffing around with the goal of “mobile data collection and manipulation.”
That is what I am paying for every morning, and maybe it is time to $top.
