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No doubt about it. Edgewater Farm generates some refuse. And as the farm kept getting bigger over the years, the size of the dumpster and our waste stream kept getting bigger. About 10 years ago it caught my attention enough to want to do something about it.
We have several different waste streams, and some have been trickier to solve than others. There is the organic waste that is generated by the farmstand and greenhouses, everything from plant and flower trimmings to vegetable spoilage. This particular waste stream has always been pretty easy to deal with, because most of it is composted here and broadcast back onto the fields as soil amendment. That waste stream has traditionally had value to us and we capture all of it.
Trash: The Necessary Evil?
The next problem we saw was the use of season extending agricultural plastics. The black plastic mulch that traditionally is used in the field for soil mulch is a petrochemically based product that had to be landfilled or incinerated. We were generating enough volume so that we were filling our dumpster multiple times during the fall with just this product alone. So when the Canadians started importing the corn starch based plastic mulch from Italy eight years ago, we made a journey north to get some to trial. It turned out to be as good as they claimed it to be. Every year since we have used this black cornstarch mulch and it holds up for about 70 days before its starts to decompose. More farmers have come on board over the years so that I might guess that 30-35% of the farms in the northeast use it in their fields. Oddly enough, the product is not certified by the feds for use by USDA Certified organic farmers, a position that I think is counter intuitive and perhaps political and therefore inexcusable. But we use it and find that the high up- front cost of the biodegradable mulch (about 3 times that of non biodegradable type) is offset by the reduction of labor at the end of season collection from the field. We just harrow it up or wait until spring to work the remains of it into the soil. Conventional oil based plastic has to be pulled up and land filled. Within a year of application there is no remaining shred of biodegradeable mulch in the soil. The same can rarely be said abut the oil based plastics, you find shreds of it for years in the fields after its use. Biodegradable mulch was a gamble we took in behalf of the environment that actually worked out well all the way around.
The next hurdle confronting us was the waste stream of pots, plastics and cardboard that is generated by greenhouse production. The plastic pots and baskets all come in carboard boxes. Seeds, hardgoods, tools as well…..much comes in cardboard boxes. We break these boxes down to reduce volume but we still had truck loads of random sized cardboard to deal with. Two years ago we bought an old trash compactor and baled our cardboard. That helped, but it still left us to move 250 lb bales of compressed cardboard. The plastic pots are recycleable, but not easily reusable. This is because they have to be washed and sterilized and it is not cost effective to do so. We have switched some of our pots to fiber so that they are biodegradable, but they are not all that user friendly for the customers.
In 2011 (in between the spring floods and Hurricane Irene) our town switched to Zero Sort trash collection and recycling. I cant begin to tell you how handy zero sort recycling is. The town of Plainfield had a recycling program before that recycled glass, some different grades of plastic and paper and cans, but it all had to be pre- sorted in separate bins with some types of plastic not allowed. With Zero sort all types of plastic, all types of glass and all types of paper and cardboard can be mixed all together in one container. Suddenly we were able to effortlessly participate in community wide recycling that reduced and diverted an additional 30 percent of of recycleable materials away from the landfill. It just became so much easier and it felt good for the environment. All that recycled plastic meant less fossil fuels to be used in plastic production. Just think, all those dierty plastic pots and bottles could be turned into another useful product.
In 2012 another environmentally sound product became available to us. As we have started up a commercial kitchen as an adjunct to our farm stand, we were in need of packaging . We were able to source food grade biodegradable containers to put our soups, salsas and pestos in. Another product diverted from the landfill.
We still have some farm waste products that we have to figure out. The greenhouse plastic film coverings are not being recycled at this time, but I have to follow up on a lead or two that may change that. The plastic clamshells that we package our cherry and grape tomatoes and our blueberries for wholesale accounts can be recycled, but I would feel much better if there was a biodegradable solution for packaging those as well, and will be keeping my eyes open for those this summer.
So if you are passionately pro/anti- incineration or pro/anti- landfilling of garbage, zero sort recycling is just a wonderful addition to the tools that deal with community waste streams. All in all, 2011 was a pretty good year for garbage at Edgewater Farm. You can be sure that we will continue working on it.
care of us.
