King County Says Compost The Leftovers

Instead of scraping Thanksgiving leftovers into a garbage can, about 660 people were asked to store their food scraps in 8-gallon blue buckets.

It’s recycling moving to another level in King County.

In a three-month pilot program, the first of its kind in the state, the county is experimenting to see whether composting food waste can further reduce the amount of trash generated by residents.

Now recycling about half its waste, the county is aiming to recycle 65 percent by 2000.

Food waste is 11 percent of what ends up in landfills.

The Thanksgiving scraps in the blue buckets will be hauled to a composting business in Pierce County, where they’ll be mixed with yard waste and transformed into organic fertilizer.

“People say, ‘Ooh, ick,’ but that’s what’s in your garbage can right now,” said Jeff Gaisford, acting director of the county’s solid waste program. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be recycling it.”

The composting program has collected two tons of waste from Lake Forest Park and from two neighborhoods east of Renton since it began in September.

If the food waste program is successful, the county might team up with the private sector to build a plant to compost food and yard waste, Gaisford said.