BRATTLEBORO — Joyce Marcel's column in the June 1 issue, “We fought the bear and the bear won,” illustrates a connection between co-existence with wildlife and solid waste management.
Marcel twice refers to taking meat scraps, bones, and carcasses “to the dump.” In the Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD), this kind of garbage is trucked to a landfill in Moretown, over 100 miles north of Brattleboro.
This begs the question: Why is organic waste being stored outdoors, enticing bears, while awaiting a 100-mile journey north to a landfill in someone else's community?
There is a solution that is already up and running in the WSWMD.
Project COW (Community Organic Waste) allows residents of the district to take all manner of organic waste - meat scraps, chicken bones, vegetable waste, and food-soiled paper and cardboard - to the COW dumpster at the WSWMD Transfer Station on Old Ferry Road. There is no charge to do so. The waste is commercially composted at a farm in Greenfield, Mass., turning it into a nutrient-rich soil additive.
Before you begin thinking that this sounds inconvenient, consider the habits that our family has established. Vegetable waste goes into our own backyard compost. Soiled paper, and paper milk and juice containers, go directly into a 10-gallon plastic container in our mudroom. Meat scraps and bones go into a compostable container (paper carton for milk or juice) in the freezer. About once every two weeks, we take all of this compostable waste to one of the COW dumpsters.
None of this is a lot of work. It reduces our waste stream considerably, and it feels a lot better to be feeding the COW than tempting a bear.