PORTLAND, Maine - South Portland and Scarborough will conduct pilot projects soon in collecting food waste for composting.
South Portland's pilot will begin in May. Travis Wagner, an Environmental Policy Professor at the University of Southern Maine, will be evaluating the program, "trying to figure out the percentage of people that participate on a weekly basis, and then trying to measure the amount of food waste that's actually collected."
Wagner also says he'll try to talk with participants to find out if there were any "barriers" to their participation.
Wagner says experience elsewhere around the country shows a major barrier can be the "ick" factor of dealing with the storage of food waste until it's picked up as part of trash collection.
Ecomaine, the regional trash entity, has a system in place for composting food waste.
