Princeton’s organic food waste recycling program is going on a three-month hiatus – beginning in February – while town officials re-evaluate the program and consider their options.
The last pickup of organic food waste is scheduled for Jan. 30. The town’s contract with Solterra Recycling Solutions, which picks up the organic food waste every week, expires Jan. 31, Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert said.
Meanwhile, Princeton officials will hold a food waste community meeting on Feb. 6 at Witherspoon Hall. The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at the building that is located at 400 Witherspoon St.
It will be an open public meeting of the Mayor and Princeton Council to discuss the issue.
The move to suspend the program grew out of a combination of a doubling of the current price for the service, the hauler’s failure to pick up the organic food waste, and sometimes sending it to an incinerator instead of to a processing facility, Mayor Lempert said.
Solterra Recycling Solutions was the sole bidder for the a two-year contract to collect the organic food waste. Its bid to collect the organic food waste totaled $829,200 for 2019 and 2020.
This would have meant an increase in the price for residents who participate in the optional program – and with no guarantee that the pickup service would improve, or that the food waste would not be incinerated or dumped in a landfill, Mayor Lempert said.
“Compounding these operational issues, our food waste stream contained unacceptable levels of contamination from time to time,” Mayor Lempert said.
“In those instances, the farm (where the organic food waste was to be delivered) rejected our food waste and it ended up in a landfill,” she revealed.
Mayor Lempert acknowledged that suspending the organic food waste program was a difficult decision, but it will allow town officials time to re-invent the program and to look at different options.
One option is to handle the program in-house by using municipal employees to pick up the organic food waste, she said. The town would have to go out to bid for a facility – a farm or processing facility – that would take organic waste.
“We need a strong comfort level that it will be composted,” Mayor Lempert said.
In the meantime, while Princeton officials are working to find a solution, organic food waste program participants should hold onto the dedicated green carts until 2019 registration is released, Mayor Lempert reported.
