Massachusetts officials consider new Cape Cod food waste recycling facility

Efforts are under way to build a regional composting facility in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, part of an aim to establish food waste recycling centers across the peninsula, the Bourne Enterprise reports.

Leading the efforts is a development group including Kari Parcell, waste reduction coordinator with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, and Mary Ryther, recycling and solid waste coordinator for the Falmouth Department of Public Works.

“We’ve been talking about it for many, many years,” says Phillip Goddard, Integrated Solid Waste Management manager of facility compliance and technology development and a member of the Bourne Recycling Committee. “The Coastal Community Composting project with Barnstable County did solid waste studies through the Cape Cod Commission. One of the main things to come out was to do a regional composting facility, several of them on the Cape.”

The biggest challenge for towns such as Bourne, Massachusetts, in recycling food waste is that it has to be transported to facilities off of Cape Cod, Goddard notes.

The development group has identified a former military base, Joint Base Cape Cod, in the Upper Cape, as an ideal choice for a facility. The 220-acre base parcel is no longer needed for military purposes.

First steps include conducting a feasibility study, Goddard says, and the developmental group has secured an $80,000 grant from the Newport, Rhode Island-based nonprofit organization 11^th Hour Racing to hire a consultant to draft the feasibility study.

The town’s food waste recycling program started in 2022 and has been successful in recycling food waste into compost. The program initially required residents to bring waste to the Residential Recycling Center, then was expanded to include collection bins in schools. In 2023, the town collected 8.5 tons of food waste, according to the report.