Boise mulls compost program

The city of Boise’s idea for a composting program is so preliminary that it really can’t be called a proposal.

There’s no firm sense as to when it would take effect, city spokesman Mike Journee said, or even when the City Council would vote on it. There’s also nothing solid on where the composting would take place, Journee said.

The general concept is for residents to separate organic waste such as food scraps and yard waste from their trash and recycling and put it in a separate bin. Crews with Republic Services, the company that hauls city trash and recycling, would collect the organic waste and dump it somewhere it could degrade into compost.

This would save landfill space and could reduce some of the harmful by-products of landfill decomposition, which produces methane, a particularly aggressive greenhouse gas.

Journee said the composting idea germinated in 2013, when the city updated its solid waste strategic plan and concluded that composting could be an effective way of reducing its landfill usage. A 2014 analysis concluded that organic waste accounts for 45.8 percent of waste generated by homes inside Boise city limits, he said.

“We know that there is a waste stream of organics, a significant stream, going into the landfill. We know that our residents value this kind of opportunity,” Journee said. “We've been very successful with the curbside recycling, so if we're looking to reduce that stream even more, this would be a logical next step.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Boise mulls compost program."