Hitting Pay Dirt
91福利 Researcher, Undergraduate, Partners Awarded Grant for MidCoast Composting Project
As part of an interdisciplinary team examining ways to reduce food waste in Maine, a researcher in the 91福利 School of Economics and his undergraduate student assistant were recently awarded $17,000 from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) towards a start-up composting program in the MidCoast region. The funds will go to project partners B贸 Lait Farm of Washington, Maine and ScrapDogs Community Compost of Camden, Maine to implement a food scrap collection and processing system in the region.
Researcher Travis Blackmer and undergraduate Taylor Patterson are part of a project called 鈥Making Maine鈥檚 local food system sustainable鈥 being conducted by a team of researchers and students affiliated with the Mitchell Center. Patterson is one of five undergraduate scholars being funded by the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation聽to conduct the research.
The DEP grant is being used to purchase hauling equipment, large 32-gallon toters and a trailer for ScrapDogs, and a new gravel composting pad and composting equipment where B贸 Lait can process the food scraps and manure to begin the composting cooking process.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been working with B贸 Lait since April,鈥 Blackmer reports. 鈥淎nd the reason we picked MidCoast Maine as the focus of our efforts is because it鈥檚 an area with a high number of sustainability and zero-waste groups, but they don鈥檛 have any composting businesses that do anything related to community-oriented composting.鈥
The team worked closely with DEP and the Maine Department of Agriculture to locate the Washington dairy farm run by Connor and Alexis MacDonald, who were anxious to join ranks in a startup composting business.
ScrapDogs, the waste collector, hauler, and processor, came on board in July and focuses on households, restaurants, and other small food waste producers. Tessa Rosenberry and Davis Saltonstall of ScrapDogs were met with enthusiasm by their community and quickly have outgrown their pilot site in downtown Camden.
Notes Rosenberry and Saltonstall of ScrapDogs, “The Mitchell Center team has played a crucial role in fostering our partnership with B贸 Lait, taking the lead on writing the DEP grant and really capturing our intentions and the impact this endeavor can have on the region. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are without Travis and Taylor.鈥
B贸 Lait will be on the compost production side given their access to the cow manure needed to mix with the food waste, the space at their farm, and because they have the tractors and other equipment needed to produce high-quality compost.
鈥淲e are very excited to provide a necessary service to this area, and to create a value-added product from otherwise discarded materials,鈥 say the MacDonalds. 鈥淲e always had an interest in composting, but if it wasn’t for the folks with the Mitchell Center we would not have been able to begin with this process of starting a composting business.鈥
鈥淚 like to call this the 鈥楳idCoast Composting Cooperative鈥欌攖wo companies that are separate but are partners,鈥 says Blackmer, who is one of a handful of researchers on the Mitchell Center鈥檚 Materials Management聽team.
Blackmer notes that while he and Patterson worked as the marketing, outreach, client recruitment, and education arm of B贸 Lait before it partnered with ScrapDogs, 鈥淎t this point we鈥檙e hoping we鈥檙e less integral because that鈥檚 what ScrapDogs wants to do鈥攖hey want to be the marketing/outreach arm, host community gardening and composting seminars and educational seminars in schools. Our focus now is on optimizing the process鈥 and to focus on the financial performance of the project on both sides, collection and compost production.鈥
鈥擠avid Sims