Composting & Food Waste

Join NRRA as we set up a Green Cone Solar Digester in a residential yard to accept food scraps from the kitchen!

Green Cone Solar Digester Setup

Composting during the summer months is easy, but what about composting the rest of the year? Join NRRA Education Manager, Heather Herring, as she explores composting through the seasons in your own backyard.

NRRA Composting Through the Seasons

Keene, NH asked NRRA to research two food scrap composting systems in order to reduce the weight that is going into MSW (Municipal Solid Waste). Heather Herring created a video to show how she set up a Subpod composting system using worms in her yard to test the ease of setup, use, and amount of material she can keep out of the landfill. NRRA would love to work with organizations, schools, or restaurants in the Keene area using food scrap composting systems. Stay tuned for more as this project continues and for more videos!

NHDES Credits:  .75 

Investigate all the options for zero waste event training programs that expand beyond NRRA's present RecycleMobile program. This includes access to NRRA’s Can Cage aluminum recycling program, additional container approaches, and basic training on how to plan for better materials purchasing and incorporating composting at events. Planning ahead is the most effective tool in reducing waste at special events. What you learn today can be used before, during and after your event.

NHDES Credits:  1

This recorded panel webinar covers updates from Vermont’s recycling, composting, product stewardship, and waste reduction initiatives as well as Environmental Producer Responsibility stewardship legislation in Massachusetts.

Join the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, your recycling nonprofit, for this webinar to discuss these issues. Cathy Jamieson is a Solid Waste Program Manager at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. Ariela Lovett is a Legislative Analyst with the MA Municipal Association.

NHDES Credits:  1

On average, students produce 1.5 pounds of waste every single day. What does that mean? For example, a high school with 535 students did a waste composition study and calculated their waste generation to be 72 tons/year. This is equal to (on average) five and a half school buses!

NHDES Credits:  1

Imagine buying 5 bags of groceries. On your way out of the store, you dump 2 of them directly in the trash. This is the reality for Americans, who waste roughly 40% of food produced for consumption. School cafeterias are no exception, but it doesn't have to be that way! This recorded webinar will outline the wasted food crisis, model methods for measuring wasted cafeteria food, and provide tangible solutions.

Why do students throw away perfectly good food? One California waste generation study showed that students generate 37.3 pounds of organic waste per year, making it almost half of the total waste generated at a school (California Department of Resources 2014). There are countless more recent studies, but one thing is clear; the United States has a school food waste issue. Food waste leads to increased waste disposal costs and wasted food budget funds, not to mention the environmental costs of sending food to sit in a landfill.