KENT, Conn.—Members of the Conservation Commission said during their Wednesday, June 11, meeting that they believe they are seeing the beginnings of societal changes in the way residents approach conservation issues.
“I kind of feel like I see the tide turning,” said member Connie Manes, who is also executive director of the Kent Land Trust.
She was referring to two key initiatives undertaken by the Conservation Commission: Pollinator Pathways and food scrap composting.
The Conservation Commission backs the concept of No Mow May, which encourages property owners to allow their lawns to grow through that crucial spring month to provide food for pollinators.
Approximately 75 percent of the world’s flowering plants and 35 percent of global food crops rely on animal pollinators such as bees, butterflies, birds and bats.
Declining pollinator populations, driven by factors such as habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change, can lead to reduced crop yields and even produce crop failures, ultimately affecting the availability and cost of food.
This spring, the Board of Selectmen reaffirmed its support of the Pollinator Pathway resolution at the request of the Conservation Commission, agreeing to defer roadside cutting as much as possible and to leave borders of uncut grasses on the edges of town properties.
“Even though May is well over, I see a ton of wild lawns,” observed Manes. “A lot of homes are looking long in the grass. If we make something normative, if we show people a different expectation, pretty soon it catches on.
“There’s nothing intrinsically beautiful about a lawn,” she continued, “but we have been conditioned to think of that as a standard of beauty, as a marker of whether we care about our land. It may be the case 50 years from now that we won’t have that same standard and that there will be more openness to different kinds of home landscaping.”
The other focus, food scrap recycling, is being actively embraced in the town through a municipal food scrap program now entering its third year. Kent has been so successful in creating its program, following its participation in a DEEP pilot program two years ago, that the state holds it up as a model of what other towns should be doing.
At the recent Kent Land Trust Memorial Day picnic, members of the commission touted the concept, encouraging diners to scrape the leftovers on their plates into recycling containers and chatting with people about the benefits of the program.
Commission member Wendy Murphy had a booth demonstrating how easy it is to turn the scraps into compost that can nourish next year’s crops.
“It was worth doing,” Murphy reported, “although it wasn’t as much fun as face painting. I liked showing people how quickly garbage turns into compost—it can happen almost overnight, although that is energy consuming.”
“I saw so many more people scraping their plates,” said member Liddy Baker.
Chairman Jean Speck said she went table to table talking about the program. She encountered two “challengers” while chatting with residents. “One challenger said, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know the garbage will weigh a lot less. I didn’t make the connection that the garbage bill will go down.’ But another said he appreciated the information but can’t be bothered,” she related.
She laid out “the logical process” of food scrap recycling for listeners, which greatly reduces the weight of the municipal solid waste (MSW) that the town must dispose of. As the town pays by the ton for carting and disposing of MSW, it saves the community money when food scraps are recycled.
She found the biggest obstacle to getting people to compost is the expectation of smell, a problem that can be controlled by the kind of container the scraps are put in. “The baseline, simple, relatable things got through to people,” she said. “
During the pilot program, Kent saw a reduction in MSW of 48.8 tons due to the diversion of food scraps. The “Save As You Throw” pilot program resulted in a $10,981 savings to the town over just the first 10 months of the program. In the second year, savings were sufficient to allow the Selectmen to reduce the cost of a transfer station permit by $10 for. next year.
The commission explored how it can promote the concept further, changing residents’ mindset even more. Carol Frank said the next “untapped part of the population” are residents who get curbside pickup.
Speck said that as a member of the volunteer fire department’s Annual Ball Committee she “pitched to collect food scraps,” a suggestion eagerly embraced by the company. “That’s the kind of mindset change we’re looking for,” said Manes.
