Casella hires UVM to learn about plastic contamination of soils through depackaging technology
Anyone knows that plastics decompose on a very different timescale than organics - they basically don't decompose. Google says it can take anywhere between 20 to 500 years depending on size and structure. Yet our Agency of Natural Resources and Vermont's number one waste systems management company, Casella, believe that we don't have to go through the inconvenient process of separating plastics from food wastes, as mandated by the Universal Recycling Law, at the source. Instead, Casella’s new innovative solution to the mandated landfill ban is a so-called Depackaging Facility that does the hard work automatically and separates food scraps from the plastics that package them.
Watch the video above and learn in 6 minutes from Casella that the technology is so proficient that the resulting stream of food scraps may be composted, sent through biodigesters, and even land applied on farms. But what about the remaining plastic contamination, yet the hard to scope microplastic contamination? Casella is funding research at UVM to analyze the issue and associated risks for the environment, including human health (learn more here).
“Our findings are hugely important to Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law (URL) which necessitated this kind of research,... There is so much we don’t know about using food waste, particularly the impacts of plastic contamination.” said Kate Porterfield, a PhD student in College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (CEMS).
Rural Vermont is in coalition with Poultry Farmers For Compost Foraging (PFCF), Vermonters for a Clean Environment, Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) to emphasize that there are decentralized pathways to compost food residuals that have been separated from their recyclable packaging materials at the source on farms in a way that does not create another resource concern but that truly enhances the soils of agricultural producers in Vermont. The coalition imposes political pressure on the Agency of Natural Resources to implement and enforce the related source separation requirement and the priority uses of food residuals as laid out in the Universal Recycling Law (more info here).
Depackaging technology conveniently alleviates generators' responsibility under the Universal Recycling Law to separate organics from other waste streams in stark contrast to the mandate and definitions in the law but upon incentive from ANR. Alongside the pressing environmental concerns resulting from plastic contaminations of soils, this mismanagement or lack of implementation of the URL directives also furthers corporate consolidation towards a monopoly on food residuals management (remember that Casella bought Grow Compost? see story here). A development that infringes upon opportunities for market development for decentralized on-farm composting facilities like Black Dirt Farm, Perfect Circle Farm, Cloud Path Farm, Sunrise Farm and others. The easy way out for generators, including institutions like grocery stores and schools, through depackaging facilities makes collaborations with decentralized actors less attractive/ less cost effective.
Contact caroline@ruralvermont.org to stay in the loop on this campaign for protecting the Universal Recycling Law.