A new community food waste pilot program is ramping up this spring, though the equipment needed to launch it is currently stuck in customs at the border between the U.S. and Canada.
Takshanuk Watershed Council compost program manager Cindy Zuluaga Jimenez said there are currently two pallets of countertop food dehydrators working their way through the customs process and headed to Haines sometime in the next few weeks.
The food dehydrators are made by the Canadian company Lomi, which is sending its food dehydrators to be part of the Chilkat Valley’s pilot food waste program.
For the next year, 35 people can sign up to get one of the dehydrators and work on reducing the amount of food waste that goes to the landfill. So far, eight people have signed up to be part of the program, said Cindy Zuluaga Jimenez who is the compost program manager for the Takshanuk Watershed Council.
For a donation of up to $150, people who sign up will get a countertop food dehydrator which dries and grinds food scraps into a material that can then be taken to the Chilkat Valley Composting Center on Sawmill Road. There, they’ll turn in a bucket and get another one, Jimenez said. The material they leave behind will be turned into compost.
Jimenez said any Chilkat Valley resident can participate and there’s a sliding scale for the starting price because she “doesn’t want cost to be a hindrance.” She said anyone who wants to participate or talk about that initial cost can reach out to her at [email protected].
Funding for the program came from a mix of private donors, the Central Council Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the Rasmuson Foundation as well as federal funding through the USDA.
Jimenez said the idea is to reduce the amount of material headed to the space-limited landfill and improve the health of local soil. And, she hopes the program will take off.
“I want to up that number from 35 to 350,” Jimenez said, “With that I think we can divert 40 percent of the waste from the landfill.”