Non Technical Summary
Non-Technical Summary:In the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, solid waste transfer stations and their municipalities are looking to reduce the amount of waste stream entering landfills, reduce the cost of municipal solid waste disposal and protect our environmental resources. Our region consists of 40% of the state's surface waters, is made up of many small communititeswith populations less than 5,000people and highly depends on environmentaltourism as the major economic driver. New England currently has the highest tipping fees for municipal solid waste in the country which is why diverting food waste from our waste stream and creating a usable compost would have positive economic impacts for our small communties' budgets. Our pilot program will include a training platform from environmental professionals in our state and include composting tumbler units for residents to start composting at home with the knowledge for doing it correctly. This will encourage residents to compost more in our region and understand the benefits of reducing waste while creating fertile compost for growing food. Likewise, our program aims to implement the first two large scale food waste composting sites in our region sited at transfer stations. These sites will also encourge more composting amoungst residents that view the practice and can also be a model for other transfer stations in our region that wish to also pursue food waste composting at a larger scale.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
703	0430	0001	100%

Knowledge Area
703 - Nutrition Education and Behavior;

Subject Of Investigation
0430 - Climate;

Field Of Science
0001 - Administration;

Goals / Objectives
Major Goals:1) Implement the first large scale food waste composting sites at 2 Lakes Region transfer stations.2) Build grassroots capacity amoung residents in our target communties through training, at-home composting and food production using compost produced.3) Provide greater outreach, training and eduction to Lakes Region residents and solid waste operators in our target communties regarding waste diversion, food waste composting, food productionthrough compost used and knowledge on waste prevention.4) Gather data through training sessions, surveys and site monitoring for information on: amount of food waste reduced from trash disposal (at-home), tonage of food waste diverted from the waste stream (transfer stations), amount of compost material produced "black gold" (at-home and transfer stations) and amount of food produced through the use of compost. Other metrics may be included as we learn from our composting professionals.

Project Methods
Methods:1) Advertisement and outreach of program to residents through local informaiton outlets, flyers, information sessions, social media and municiapl websites.2) Storage and distrubution support from municipal stakeholder groups for managing composting tumbler units.3) Training workshops/sessions for residents, solid waste operators and additional stakeholders to learn how to compost from our educational partners. LRPC staff will learn the training and duplicate to maximize outreach.4) Surveys will created and distributed (both paper and electronic may be used) to participating residents before and after composting with tumblers to gain data for the pilot program.5) Solid waste sites implementing new large scale food waste composting locations will monitor tonage of foodwaste diverted and compost produced.6) LRPC will work with both targeted transfer stations to achieve state approve for permiting food waste composting sites at their transfer station.