Monroe County is preparing to develop a new 10-year plan to guide how it manages the community's garbage and recycling.
And county officials have said it's likely the local solid waste management plan will give consideration to keeping food scraps and other organic waste out of landfills.
During a recent meeting of the county Legislature's Environment and Public Works Committee, its chairperson, Legislator Sue Hughes Smith, D-Brighton, asked the county administration whether the plan’s core goals would incorporate aspects of a circular economy, such as recycling food scraps and other organic wastes through compositing or anaerobic digestion.
"We will have a series of public meetings ... getting input from the community on priorities," said Michael Garland, the county's director of environmental services. "And I would expect that topic will be a popular topic that will be evaluated for this particular plan."
Garland added that goals and metrics will be developed as the plan advances, and any plan will have to align with state priorities, including its laws requiring certain businesses such as restaurants and grocery stores to donate excess food and recycle scraps.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation's statewide solid waste management plan emphasizes, among other things, waste reduction and reuse along with organics recycling and reduction. And the county's plan will be subject to DEC approval, after which legislators would vote on accepting it.
Monroe County's last solid waste management plan was finalized in 2015. While it did address organic waste, the focus was largely on municipal yard waste composting programs and encouraging backyard composting of food scraps.
In the years since, countywide interest in food scraps recycling has grown considerably. This spring, the county provided several local school districts with grants to help them reduce and repurpose food waste through things like composting.
The county also has partnered with the town of Pittsford for a food scrap recycling project, which is at capacity with participants. Residents collect and separate their scraps, which they drop off at a collection site. A company collects them and processes them in an anaerobic digester to create electricity that is sold into the grid.
And the county is preparing to release its draft organics management plan in the first months of 2026. Its Climate Action Plan also called for an analysis of the county's capacity to compost food waste, among other things. When food waste decomposes in a landfill, it generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The city of Rochester rolled out its household food waste drop off program four years ago, starting its first year with 1,000 participants. It's now up to roughly 2,300 participants, said Karen St. Aubin, the city's director of operations.
" I didn't know that we would grow this quickly, but we absolutely have grown," St. Aubin said. "...In the first couple of years, we had two sites. We added another drop off site last year."
So far in this fourth year, the city has collected over 145 tons of food waste, St. Aubin said. Since the beginning, the program has collected 468 tons of scraps, which have been turned into compost instead of being sent to a landfill.
And St. Aubin expects the program to continue growing.
"At this point, we can take more," St. Aubin said. "We keep expanding so we can take more participants, and we do get participants routinely — word of mouth, and a lot of people go to the website. There's a lot of interest in this."
County legislators are currently considering a measure to hire Barton and Loguidice as a consultant for developing the plan. The firm was the consultant for the 2015 plan.
County officials expect to complete the plan in the fourth quarter of 2027.
