By Blake Haas
BLOOMINGTON – Designed to help with the large amount of take-out containers infiltrating landfills, a new community compost kiosk is coming to the Twin-Cities.
Michael Brown, Ecology Action Center executive director, told WJBC’s Marc Strauss, the new kiosk is the first of its kind locally.
“For the first time ever, our community will have access to community composting, which is essentially a drop-off composting program, so people won’t have to bother with backyard composting. This system can take a lot more materials than you can normally do in backyard composting. Normally, you have to avoid things like meat, dairy, high protein, high fat, prepared foods, things that really aren’t going to compost hot enough to draw pathogens, and this program does.”
The new kiosk-based composting program will be fee-based but operates on a pay-as-you-go rate. Brown said the kiosk would provide an environmental-friendly option to discarding waste.
“The idea is landfills are designed to be a close-field system where no oxygen can get it, so this actually prevents the proper decomposition of natural materials like food, like paper, like natural fiber, clothing, cardboard, any of those things. They aren’t going to break down normally in a landfill…Food waste in the trash helps contribute to climate change, which is something we need to be paying more attention too. The message, in the end, is as simple as if you utilize this program and compost your food waste properly, you can be helping to prevent climate change.
Residents can preorder a kiosk starter kit for $20.99, which includes the composting fee and composting materials.
“We don’t have the kiosk in place yet, but in the next few weeks here, that’s when the program will formally launch. We will make the announcement coming up, but it is a nice location that is easily assessable to the public.”
LISTEN: Ecology Action Center executive director Michael Brown spoke with WJBC’s Marc Strauss about a new community composting kiosk.
More information can be found at ecologyactioncenter.org.
Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].
