Maine Compost School director quoted in Morning Sentinel article on Backyard Farms
Mark King, an environmental specialist for the Department of Environmental Protection’s division of sustainability and the director of the Maine Compost School, spoke with the Morning Sentinel for the article, “Backyard Farms considers plan to reduce greenhouse waste.” Backyard Farms, a commercial greenhouse in Madison, produces 25 to 30 million pounds of tomatoes and generates about 3,000 tons of waste annually. Since the greenhouse opened in 2006, waste has been compressed and sent to a landfill in Norridgewock, according to the article. The company and local sanitary district have a proposed partnership that would liquefy and remove the water from the greenhouse plant waste, leaving only about 10 percent of the waste to become compost or be taken to the landfill, the article states. “We see a lot of re-use in the smaller farms, but the larger ones tend to produce so much volume of this vegetable matter and a lot of them don’t have land or a compost facility associated with them, so it’s easier for them to just contract with a waste hauler,” King said. The Maine Compost School is a collaborative program of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Maine Department of Environmental Protection; and Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.