Thursday, July 28, 2011

Don’t Toss That Melon Rind

In HoCo we have curbside recycling of metal, paper, plastic, and yard waste. This September, a test group of HoCo homeowners will also be able to recycle their melon rinds.

According to this story by Jessica Anderson in The Sun, about 5,000 households in Ellicott City and Elkridge will be able “to add banana peels, egg shells and even old pizza boxes to their recyclables, becoming one of the first East Coast localities to start a large-scale composting program.”

“The county will provide residents with a 35-gallon container that will be collected once a week, the same day as yard waste. The food scraps will be taken to Recycled Green in Woodbine, where they will be composted and sold as a soil nutrient.”

This is basically a defensive maneuver against the looming increase in the cost of hauling HoCo’s trash two hours south to King George, Virginia. The sweetheart deal that the county has with Waste Management only has two years left. An increase of over 60% is expected.

In other words we need to put less trash on the train or we’ll wind up paying more for trash removal than cable service.
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