The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Hopefully a stepping stone to a larger-scale composting operation
[ By Kendra Walker ]The Mt. Crested Butte town council has agreed to renew its contract with Elements Mountain Compost to continue subsidizing a north valley residential food waste drop-off composting program this year.
Last June, the town partnered with Elements and the town of Crested Butte to launch the pilot composting program. Residents can subscribe to drop off their food waste at the collection location at the Four-Way Stop in Crested Butte where Elements gathers and transports the organics to its commercial composting facility in Salida. Participants pay $17 per month to use the drop-off, and the towns of Mt. Crested Butte and Crested Butte evenly split the subsidy costs of running the compost program until there are enough subscribers for it to run on its own. The total cost of running the drop-off is $3,500 per month.
According to Julie Mach of Elements, the program currently has 54 active residential participants, with 21% of current users being Mt. Crested Butte residents. Three businesses also participate, including Montanya Distillery, Crested Butte Personal Chefs and Crested Butte Community School.
On average, each household diverts approximately 40 pounds, and the program to date has collected approximately 19,056 pounds of food waste for composting. The commercial collection program has diverted 1,280 pounds since it began in January. Approximately 800 pounds of waste was collected from town events including the CB Town Picnic, Mt. CB Town Picnic and Vinotok. Mach said the community’s waste diverted to date is equivalent to reducing about 9.6 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from the atmosphere, or removing two passenger vehicles from the road.
Mach said the goal is to have 100 households and five commercial businesses participating by the end of the pilot year. Mach noted that Elements plans to increase marketing and outreach to encourage more interest and participation, including having more presence at community events this summer.
While the council was generally supportive of the program, they expressed concern at the small percentage of participating Mt. CB residents.
Council member Bruce Nation noted that he had participated in the composting program but switched to buying a home composting appliance and wondered if others might be going a similar route. “But I support keeping the program alive to see if we can get a better response rate,” he said.
“This is our intermediate step,” said town planner Shannon Hessler. “The long-term goal is to have town composting. It’s a stepping stone to hopefully a larger-scale composting operation.”
Town council members Steve Morris and Valeda Scribner wondered about whether the emissions of Mt. CB residents driving down to the Four-Way to drop off their compost cancelled out the CO2 saved from the program. “That’s personally one of the only reasons I drive down to town,” said Scribner. “But I agree I would like to make it more lucrative, attractive and impactful.”
Mach said they had received feedback from customers interested in a drop-off location in Mt. Crested Butte. She said they could work with the town about a potential Mt. CB bin or assigning block ambassadors. “A block ambassador would have a bin and all the neighbors who want to drop there can access that bin in their neighborhood,” she said. “We could do that in multiple locations.”
The council agreed to continue subsidizing the program and renew its contract with Elements through the end of the year, with plans to review its progress in December. The Crested Butte council took the same action. Mt. Crested Butte councilmembers also directed town staff and Elements to work on the possibility of a drop-off site in Mt. Crested Butte and do more outreach to get people and businesses on board to make the program more impactful. The town also plans to have composting at several Mt. CB events this summer. “It is very critical to start talking about what we need to do to make this more successful,” said Scribner.
