{"id":16656,"date":"2018-12-05T13:05:47","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T18:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?p=16656"},"modified":"2018-12-21T08:58:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T13:58:45","slug":"hitting-pay-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/2018\/12\/05\/hitting-pay-dirt\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitting Pay Dirt"},"content":{"rendered":"

UMaine Researcher, Undergraduate, Partners Awarded Grant for MidCoast Composting Project<\/em><\/p>\n

As part of an interdisciplinary team examining ways to reduce food waste in Maine, a researcher in the UMaine School of Economics and his undergraduate student assistant were recently awarded $17,000 from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) towards a start-up composting program in the MidCoast region. The funds will go to project partners B\u00f3 Lait Farm of Washington, Maine and ScrapDogs Community Compost of Camden, Maine to implement a food scrap collection and processing system in the region.<\/p>\n

Researcher Travis Blackmer<\/a> and undergraduate Taylor Patterson are part of a project called \u201cMaking Maine\u2019s local food system sustainable<\/a>\u201d being conducted by a team of researchers and students affiliated with the Mitchell Center. Patterson is one of five undergraduate scholars being funded by the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation\u00a0to conduct the research.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Jami Badershall, Maine Dairy Council<\/span>Connor and Alexis MacDonald of B\u00f3 Lait Farm in Washington, Maine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The DEP grant is being used to purchase hauling equipment, large 32-gallon toters and a trailer for ScrapDogs, and a new gravel composting pad and composting equipment where B\u00f3 Lait can process the food scraps and manure to begin the composting cooking process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working with B\u00f3 Lait since April,\u201d Blackmer reports. \u201cAnd the reason we picked MidCoast Maine as the focus of our efforts is because it\u2019s an area with a high number of sustainability and zero-waste groups, but they don\u2019t have any composting businesses that do anything related to community-oriented composting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team worked closely with DEP and the Maine Department of Agriculture to locate the Washington dairy farm run by Connor and Alexis MacDonald, who were anxious to join ranks in a startup composting business.<\/p>\n

ScrapDogs, the waste collector, hauler, and processor, came on board in July and focuses on households, restaurants, and other small food waste producers. Tessa Rosenberry and Davis Saltonstall of ScrapDogs were met with enthusiasm by their community and quickly have outgrown their pilot site in downtown Camden.<\/p>\n

Notes Rosenberry and Saltonstall of ScrapDogs, “The Mitchell Center team has played a crucial role in fostering our partnership with B\u00f3 Lait, taking the lead on writing the DEP grant and really capturing our intentions and the impact this endeavor can have on the region. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are without Travis and Taylor.\u201d<\/p>\n

B\u00f3 Lait will be on the compost production side given their access to the cow manure needed to mix with the food waste, the space at their farm, and because they have the tractors and other equipment needed to produce high-quality compost.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very excited to provide a necessary service to this area, and to create a value-added product from otherwise discarded materials,\u201d say the MacDonalds. \u201cWe always had an interest in composting, but if it wasn’t for the folks with the Mitchell Center we would not have been able to begin with this process of starting a composting business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to call this the \u2018MidCoast Composting Cooperative\u2019\u2014two companies that are separate but are partners,\u201d says Blackmer, who is one of a handful of researchers on the Mitchell Center\u2019s Materials Management\u00a0<\/a>team.<\/p>\n

Blackmer notes that while he and Patterson worked as the marketing, outreach, client recruitment, and education arm of B\u00f3 Lait before it partnered with ScrapDogs, \u201cAt this point we\u2019re hoping we\u2019re less integral because that\u2019s what ScrapDogs wants to do\u2014they want to be the marketing\/outreach arm, host community gardening and composting seminars and educational seminars in schools. Our focus now is on optimizing the process\u2019 and to focus on the financial performance of the project on both sides, collection and compost production.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014David Sims<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UMaine Researcher, Undergraduate, Partners Awarded Grant for MidCoast Composting Project As part of an interdisciplinary team examining ways to reduce food waste in Maine, a researcher in the UMaine School of Economics and his undergraduate student assistant were recently awarded $17,000 from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) towards a start-up composting program in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":609,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":609,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/963"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16656"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16703,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions\/16703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}