Compost collection season to end

Sustainable Warwick’s Food-Scraps-to-Compost Program will end its best year ever when the Warwick Farmers Market closes, as it always does, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, November 24.

The program began in 2022 with initial weekly collections of about 10 to 15 pounds. According to Sustainable Warwick, the compost collected each Sunday now comes from a combination of farmers market vendors and about 60 patrons and this year, the program will have collected more than 16,000 pounds of food waste, diverting it from the landfill and turning it instead into rich compost to improve the soil and nourish future crops and plants for the Warwick community.

“Food scraps that are disposed of in the trash create dangerous methane gas, more detrimental to the planet than the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. By changing these food scraps into carbon-sequestering compost, more than 500 pounds of methane will not be released into the atmosphere, equivalent to not burning more than 2 thousand gallons of gasoline in your car,” Sustainable Warwick said.

This winter and beyond

Last year, in the farmers market off-season, the Compost Committee conducted a trial run, where residents could drop off compost Sunday mornings at Price Chopper. Sustainable Warwick said a combination of challenging weather and relatively low weekly yields has led to a suspension of that off-season program, while the Committee explores other options.

Sustainable Warwick said the first truckloads of finished compost will soon be delivered to various public areas, such as Warwick parks and the Community Garden. The organization is also in talks with several Warwick restaurants, breweries and florists that produce significant amounts of compostable material. Sustainable Warwick is also in the process of talking with town and village officials about the possibility of a municipal composting facility, which could greatly expand the program.