Starting July 1, Clinton residents can recycle food scraps at the town’s transfer station for free. Proponents of the move hope it will reduce the amount of solid waste in landfills.

Thanks to efforts from the Conservation Commission and Sustainability Committee, residents can now bring food scraps to the transfer station to be recycled. Visitors to the transfer station on Nod Road can bring food waste to be collected in two designated 50-gallon totes. The waste will be collected by Department of Public Works employees and combined with leaf composts.

Food scraps must be emptied directly into the totes; they cannot be dropped off in bags. According to a press release, examples of accepted waste include vegetables and fruits (no stickers), bread, rice, cereals, pasta, dairy products, eggs, fish and shellfish (including shells), meat, bones, coffee grounds, and tea bags (remove any staples). Food packaging or items like milk containers or bottles cannot be included in the container. The kind of container residents use to bring the food scraps to the station does not matter, and the container will be returned for residents to use again.

Mary Jo Phelps, one of the program’s organizers, explained how the initiative started.

“There was a solid waste incinerator in Hartford that was closed, and Clinton was one of the towns affected by that,” Phelps said.

She explained that as a result, the cost of waste has gone up, and there is now less space available for solid waste.

“The more we can keep out of the existing landfills, the better,” she said.

Phelps added that the Sustainability Committee started looking into programs to alleviate the issue and was eventually told that Town Manager Karl Kilduff had applied for a permit to start the food recycling program.

“To me, it’s a win-win, we keep waste out of the landfill, and you get compost out of it,” she said.

She added that July 1 would be the first official day that the composting area is open for business and that volunteers at the transfer station will be available on that day to promote the program and assist others.

“We’re just hoping people support the program and that people take advantage of this opportunity,” Phelps said.