Ken Paniello rarely opens the聽brown containers he finds behind downtown聽restaurants, but they hold what he’s after 鈥斅爕our聽leftover food and drinks. Even your used napkins. Every night, coffee shops, cafes and daycares in the Central Business District scrape聽uneaten food and other materials from patrons’ plates into a separate bin of “wet waste” for Paniello to haul away to聽become compost.
“One of the best parts about this is all the lids are shut,” he said. “For my part, I don’t have to lift them up to see what’s in them, so with minimal smell I don’t have to guess what’s in them.”
To recycling officials,聽the city-funded, voluntary food-waste program smells聽like sustainability. They say the downtown program has led to roughly 60聽tons of food scraps and other materials being diverted from the landfill each month.
And now the Jefferson County waste management board 鈥斅爓hich drew howls when it banned the use of plastic bags for yard waste three years ago 鈥斅爄s considering whether to聽require residents and businesses throughout Louisville to separate their food waste for weekly trash pickup.
The city is “simply not there,” yet on a rule to keep leftovers out of the garbage,聽said Harold聽Adams, a Public Works spokesman. “We’re focused on managing waste for the community. We’re not focused on political fights, just the job we’re tasked with.”
But waste board chairwoman Joyce St. Clair聽said the panel wants to have a community conversation before the end of the year about the issue. She聽envisions that possibly leading to a聽rule requiring that food scraps and聽wet waste聽be separated from other trash. “It is worthy of exploring聽because we want to minimize” what is thrown away,聽St. Clair said.
Public works officials said the board hasn’t looked at聽what it would cost residents to keep聽food out of the trash.聽“There’s a difference between having an idea about how to reduce waste” and figuring out the cost, St. Clair said.
If sought, the requirement would likely draw the ire of some of the same residents who opposed the plastic bag ban. Metro Councilwoman Julie Denton, R-19th District, said the few constituents 鈥� along with leaders of independent聽suburban cities and homeowners’ associations 鈥� who know about the proposal are troubled.
“I don’t hear or see a human cry from anybody to have a whole shakeup and have聽government聽take over everybody’s garbage,” she said.
But聽Airin聽Roby, director of Bright Horizons Childcare on聽Fourth聽Street, which participates in the voluntary program, said聽it would be worthwhile to pursue a communitywide rule that would require people to pick聽food waste from the trash. She said children at the daycare center聽are taught the聽importance of sustainability at an early age.
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