Good News, bad news
A Menu of choices for your food scraps
The bad news—meal preparation in our homes and restaurants creates a huge amount of leftover food. Tons of food scraps are a valuable resource that needn’t be wasted.
The good news—you can choose how to turn this resource into healthy, new soil.
Composting is nature’s way of recycling-- a time proven and rewarding way to turn food scraps and yard trimmings into a nutrient-rich soil conditioner.
How would you like to compost your food scraps?
- Choose from our Menu.
- Compost at Home and use the resulting mixture in your own garden or lawn. Never done it before? Go to the NRDC website.
- Consider teaming up with some neighbors and share the ‘black gold’ you create.
Subscribe to a Service
For those who cannot or prefer not to compost at home, you can subscribe to one of the options offered by Nordic Waste Service:
- Drop-off service: Customers exchange their filled 5-gallon food scrap bucket for a clean bucket, liner and lid weekly at 3 Coop Food Store locations (Hanover, Lebanon, White River Junction) during normal business hours.
- Curbside Pickup: Nordic picks up the customer’s filled 5-gallon food scrap bucket and leaves clean bucket, liner and lid at the customer’s location weekly. Curbside pickup service is available in Lebanon, West Lebanon, Hanover and Etna.
- Get more information, current rates or sign up on the We Recycle Food website.
Participate in the Drop off Program
Thanks to a new program by the City of Lebanon, area residents can take their food scraps to the Lebanon landfill where they will be composted and used for onsite erosion control. This use of local resources helps avoid the use of virgin soil products and increases landfill capacity.
Participation requires a permit which is available on the Lebanon NH website. Appropriate disposal bags to line the container are also required.
Find more information regarding this program (PDF).
Food scraps are a large proportion of what goes into any landfill, so composting food that you would usually throw away will not only extend the life of our landfill but reduce its harmful methane emissions.
Learn more about how to decrease the amount of food that you waste, check out the Stop Food Waste website.
Commercial Compost Collection: Bob Sandberg in Corinth, Vermont collects food scraps from several Upper Valley businesses in New Hampshire and Vermont. He leaves large totes at facilities and takes the food scraps back to his farm where he composts them primarily for use by people who buy the compost by the truck load. Full totes are replaced by clean totes. You can email Bob or call at 802-439-5563. Visit the Sandberg Farm Facebook or see The Compost Man – Corinth, VT on YouTube.
Thank you for reducing waste and extending the life of our landfill.