Curbside composting bins for most food scraps are set to arrive at Portland homes by the end of the month. And that, officials say, means the city to the south gets to be a guinea pig for Clark County.
Clark County and the city of Vancouver are adopting a “wait-and-see” approach before starting a home food waste collection program here, Vancouver Environmental Resources Manager Rich McConaghy said.
“We’re not looking at that at this point,” he said. “Really, our focus is looking at the commercial side: hospitals, businesses, schools. We see that really as our first focus.”
Food waste is the county’s largest single contributor to landfills — it made up 16.3 percent of the county’s waste stream in a 2008 study. Food decomposes in landfills, but as it does so it creates a large volume of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, McConaghy said.