Town Receives Grant to Explore Trash Reduction Strategies

The Town of Amherst has received a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Technical Assistance grant to support an assessment of recycling and waste reduction. The grant provides 80 hours of technical assistance from Veronique Blanchard, DEP’s Municipal assistance coordinator for the Western Region. 

The supported work is designed to help Amherst identify trash reduction best practices by studying model Zero Waste communities throughout the United States, to learn what challenges they have faced in reducing waste, and how they have overcome those challenges.

Blanchard will produce a report that will assist the Town in exploring possible changes in the Town’s waste hauling practices in order to significantly reduce waste. The research will include, but not necessarily be limited to, exploring the following alternatives to the Town’s current policy for contracting with haulers for residential, commercial, and municipal waste:

1. Contracting directly with a hauling company for all waste, recycling, and organic waste (composting) services
   
2. Providing hauling services directly using Town employees, space, and equipment or collaborating with neighboring towns to share the direct provision of waste hauling services

Research on best waste reduction practices will look into at least eight municipalities similar to Amherst including Boulder Colorado, Portland, Oregon, and Sommerville, Massachusetts. 

Of the forthcoming work, Blanchard said, “Each municipality is unique, and therefore there is not one ‘cookie cutter’ model which can be followed for every town seeking to reduce waste.  With determination and creativity though, towns often find truly inspired solutions, and hopefully we will uncover some which will help spark our own creativity.  We will then present this research to the Town of Amherst to aid in their exploration of zero waste initiatives that might fit Amherst’s own unique situation. “

Work is expected to commence next week and will take about eight weeks to complete.

Town Councilor Darcy DuMont (District 5), and a member of the Zero Waste Amherst (ZWA) steering committee said, “I’m hopeful that the DEP grant is just the start of a town-wide conversation about the ways that Amherst residents and businesses can reduce both our trash and our consumption. I’m especially excited to look at towns that have successfully adopted curbside compost pick up that is diverted and used locally, pay-by-weight trash, and repair ‘cafes.’ ”

The grant was submitted by Superintendent of Public Works Guilford Mooring, with the encouragement of ZWA (https://www.facebook.com/ZeroWasteAmherst), a citizen action group that aims to move the Town toward Zero Waste through planning, policy, legislation, education, and community engagement in order to reduce both pollution and climate change-causing greenhouse gases. ZWA hopes to partner with Blanchard and the Town in studying and promoting waste reduction strategies.