To those in Croton who lift their trash lids and think “It sure would be great if the Village sponsored a food scrap recycling program” – here’s some good news!

Croton will soon be running a pilot six-month program that will recycle food scraps so they can be converted into compost. It will be open to 40 Croton households and run from Saturday, January 7, 2023, through Saturday, June 24, 2023. If you’d like to participate, visit the Village website (crotononhudson-ny.gov) and click on Sustainability Committee under “Boards and Committees”. Once there, at News and Announcements on the right, the top news will tell you all about the Food Scrap Recycling program.

This new initiative is a great example of an all-hands-on-deck partnership. Since waste reduction and recycling is an important Village goal, our Sustainability Committee, led by Lindsay Audin, sought and was awarded a grant for the Village from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for this pilot. Subsequently, the Committee has worked with DEC, our DPW and the Westchester County Residential Food Scrap Transportation and Disposal Program to get the program underway. Our Conservation Advisory Council and great groups like Croton100 and Mothers Our Front will help us to get the word out.

Monday night our Board of Trustees approved an Intermunicipal Agreement for the County program. Our bagged scraps will be picked up weekly by a county truck and taken to a commercial composting facility in Cortlandt Manor.

The program will be described, and materials distributed at a kick-off meeting at noon on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022, in the Municipal Building Community Room – the only opportunity to complete the sign-up process and receive the necessary start- up supplies.

Croton has an “all of the above” strategy for sustainability – now we can add this food scrap recycling pilot to our tool kit. We look forward to a great kick-off, success for the pilot and then, with your help, looking at next steps for food scrap recycling in Croton.

Len Simon, Trustee

Village of Croton-on-Hudson