Page 4 - Waste Zero News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Tyler Skrzypiec empties a filled food waste basket for a resident customer. Blue Earth Compost was started in 2013 in West Hartford with a goal to recycle food waste into soil that can fertilize plants, as opposed to throwing away in a landfill or incinerator. (Cloe Poisson, CTMirror.org) Food waste is a fact of life. Also a fact is that it’s smelly, wet and heavy. It makes a mess out of the rest of the trash and is generally nasty. Getting food waste out of the trash may also provide the key to how Connecticut repairs the dated, expensive, fragmented and environmentally fraught waste syste...

Steam billows from a tall stack near the power block facility at the MIRA trash-to-energy facility in Hartford’s South Meadows. (Cloe Poisson, CTMirror.org) The Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority plant is a hulking presence on the Connecticut River along Hartford’s southeast flank – a sprawling complex of buildings and emissions stacks that was constructed for another time and use. It shows. In the winding corridors and rooms of this fortress-like structure — which originally burned coal to make electricity and now burns trash to generate a small portion of the state’s pow...

PITTSFIELD — Some Pittsfield city councilors said Wednesday they aren’t ready to decide whether to support a proposal to reform trash collections. And with that, a majority agreed Wednesday that any such program should not begin before summer 2022. At a Committee of the Whole meeting, councilors voted 8-3 to set July 1, 2022, as the earliest date on which such a proposal would go into effect. The council agreed it needs more time weigh the modified “pay-as-you-throw” proposal and hear more from residents. With the vote, “we let people know that they have over the next...

PITTSFIELD — The city’s leadership this week will delve into a traffic project and waste management proposal that are already generating strong opinions in the community. The city has for years been looking for ways to rein in curbside waste disposal costs, and the newest proposal aimed at achieving just that will be outlined and no doubt scrutinized at Wednesday’s 7 p.m. Committee of the Whole meeting. At-Large Councilors Peter Marchetti, Earl Persip III and Pete White proposed a bag-based “pay-as-you-throw” system for curbside waste disposal that subsidizes what sha...

PITTSFIELD — A proposal to implement “pay-as-you-throw” trash collections was met with criticism Tuesday, but it ultimately advanced to a meeting next month of the full City Council for more debate. Councilors discussed aspects of the proposal from Peter Marchetti, Pete White and Earl Persip III, who say it would help bring solid waste removal costs under control and encourage residents to recycle. Others argued that the program would be financially burdensome to residents already hurting during the coronavirus pandemic. If the ordinance is approved as written, residents would ...