City Council - City Services & Innovation Technology Committee Hearing on Docket #1748

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For the record, my name is Enrique Pepén, District 5 City Councillor, and I'm the Chair of Boston City Council Committee on City Services and Innovation Technology. Today is November 20, 2025. The exact time is 10.05 a.m. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Files Channel 964. Wording comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.csit at boston.gov. will be made a part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony will be taken during this hearing. Individuals will be called on in order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you're interested in testifying in person, Please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber.

If you are looking to testify virtually, please email our Central Staff Liaison Cora Montrond at cora.montrond for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket number 1748. Order for a hearing to discuss city services in regard to composting and the need for increased composting services. This matter was sponsored by Councilor Sharon Durkan, myself, Enrique Pepén, and Council President Ruthie Louis-Jeanne and was referred to the committee on October 1st, 2025. Today, I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor Sharon Durkan, and myself. Okay, so I'm gonna allow for opening statement from council colleagues, and then if you have a presentation, or some open remarks. Open remarks and do that.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to allow public testimony to go right after that before we go into questions. So do that. So Councilor Durkan, the floor is yours.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Councillor Pepén, for chairing this hearing and for co-sponsoring this docket with me. Boston's composting programs, Project Oscar and Curbside Composting, have proven to be incredibly popular with residents. In response to growing demand, the city's expanded curbside composting launched in 2022 from its initial 10,000 households to 30,000 households in buildings with six units or fewer. Project Oscar, which began as a pilot in 2014, has now grown to 20 drop-off sites citywide, including recent expansions in the West End, Beacon Hill, and the Fenway in District 8 after advocacy from my constituents in our office. It is inspiring to see how residents are committed to sustainability. Food waste makes up a substantial share of what ends up in landfills and contributes to 58% of Global Methane Emissions. Reducing this waste helps us meet both the city and state waste reduction goals and moves us towards a cleaner, more sustainable, and more rodent resistant Boston.

But now, we are treading water. The City has paused further expansion of these programs because they are costly, and our region lacks the infrastructure and processing capacity to meet the growing demand. Our contracted composting facilities are at capacity. More than 400 residents remain on the waiting list for curbside composting. and more neighborhoods are requesting Project Oscar bins. At the same time, the state is considering expanding commercial food waste bans and potentially exploring residential food waste requirements. As these conversations progress, Boston should not wait to react. If this is one of our priorities, we should be thinking ahead, exploring how we invest in composting and build long-term infrastructure needed to eventually support composting citywide. As climate change continues to accelerate, emission reductions and sustainable practices become increasingly necessary. and getting ahead of the curve will allow us to scale equitably and sustainably.

This is a substantial opportunity, particularly in residential buildings with more than six units. and across commercial buildings, which produce higher volumes of waste. We should be asking what steps we can take now to maintain and expand access to composting for residents and we should be thinking boldly and critically about the future of composting and what it should look like in Boston. I want to thank Dennis Roach and Maddie Montgomery for all their hard work. The mayor's administration has done more on this issue than anyone, than any and former administration. So this hearing for me is really about strategies that are available to us to have a real conversation about the cost. of these programs. Also, I mean, there are a lot of folks that are left out of some of the programs. And I think there are good reasons for some of the conversation that we need to have about What the cost looks like.

But at the same time, we always need to be pushing further and diverting more from landfills. So thank you so much, Chair. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Thank you, Councilor. The reason why I became a co-sponsor on this is because my district has really benefited from composting. I represent a more residential area. and I can see the the small green bins all across our streets and today is actually a pickup day so I was able to see some of that I mean in action before coming into City Hall and what I've been able to see is We've actually seen a decrease in some of our neighborhoods of rodent sites siding because of the Oscar or the Green Vins project. We also have an Oscar project over at the Rossignol Municipal Parking Lot. where folks are able to drop them off if they don't have one of the green bins and I've heard nothing but great support for this project so I want to see this be extended and be able to have other people participate in it. I also represent

different business quarters like Rossignol Square, Cleary Square, and Mattapan Square where the businesses they could very much benefit if they had a bin to put their food waste in so that they're not throwing it out in the trash bins which and so on and so forth. These bins also at our schools so that if food waste is being disregarded for or thrown on trash, they could be put on a composting bin and which could continue to add to the cleanliness of our city. So I just very much appreciate Councilor Durkan for Moving this forward. And I also will be remiss if I think Alex, Alex, you sent a public testimony comment and you mentioned New York. I actually have a friend, a city councilor colleague that represents New York. and he is on the environmental committee down there.

He was able to share a lot with me on what they've been able to do. So I'm curious to see what can we learn from other municipalities of what works over there and how we could bring it here to the city of Boston. But with that, I would love to transition over to you all for the brief opening statements.

Thank you. My name is Dennis Roach. I'm the Superintendent of Waste Reduction for the City of Boston, which falls in the Boston Public Works. Basically oversee all of our waste programs, including our recycling streams, which also includes our food waste stream. I'm joined by Maddie Montgomery, who is our zero waste program manager. She has kind of incubated this food waste program, the curbside compost, and been kind of the key lead on that project since its inception. We also have Camille Alves, who's in the audience here, that's also a Zero Waste coordinator for us. It's a team that's built out over the last four or five years with the support of the mayor and the city council about funding the Zero Waste team. They are focused on building this food composting program through education and outreach to all of our residents in the City of Austin. I think they've done a pretty good job. I'll go quickly over a little of the history of it. Food waste makes up a significant portion of our trash stream.

EPA estimates that in the U.S., 24% of the material in municipal solid waste landfill is from food. The 2019 Zero Waste Plan provided recommendations to the city about implementing food waste programs. Go back to 2014, the City of Boston's Mayor's Office of New World Mechanics started the Project Oscar program in the neighborhoods as a pilot program. which has since been passed to our department to continue to run that program been incredibly successful and and we get a lot of demand for that across the city to expand that program we've done that over the years i think we're up to 20 locations now We certainly, with more resources, would expand it even further, and we do have the demand to expand it even further. In 2022, we decided to launch a curbside program. We've partnered with a wonderful partner, Garbage to Garden. who helps us manage that program. They're our contractor in that program. We started with signing up 10,000 residents citywide in that program.

Those slots filled almost immediately, and we've expanded that program, which is pretty close to 30,000 people to date. We do currently have a wait list for that program because we're kind of budget restricted on that. But the demand for that continues to increase and we continue to focus on educational and outreach to get people to use the food waste More often from a composting perspective, from getting it out of your trap from a rodent perspective, but it has been a focus of my department for quite some time now. It does become about resources within the city and growing that program organically and getting residents to use it more often and put more food waste in their bin. It is a very costly program to the city. And we can share some of the costs at a later point. It's something that if we get more adoption, it would kind of reduce the cost of that and to grow it to a great ability I think would actually help with the cost of that.

I think some of the challenges in the industry right now is the capacity to serve as a city like Boston. I think where we bring our composting, right now we bring most of our composting to the core. and we compost maybe 20% of our materials in that range. We could use some more composting facilities around the city. A lot of them exist within about 30, 40 miles outside the city. and if Boston was to have a look to expand, I think getting some more resources to bring and have some composting facilities close to the city, I think would be beneficial to Boston.

Thank you. Maddie, you have anything to say?

Good morning, my name is Madeline Montgomery, Zero Waste Program Manager. I'm just happy to be here and continue this conversation.

Thank you so much. And as mentioned before we go into Q&A, I do want to give an opportunity for Quick public testimony. So we have one person on the list, Alex. Alex, you have two minutes.

Here?

Yes.

I also brought some copies, 15 pages. Where do I leave these?

They actually printed them for us.

No, this is something else.

Oh, okay. You can leave them right there.

Thank you. My name is Alex Alex. I'm a resident in Dorchester. While I was in New York City, I worked for the Department of Sanitation, and I helped them with their compost rollout in Queens. I spoke to 1,000 plus residents. It was a success by the city's metrics, but I identified issues that Boston is replicating with its approach. Since May, I have diverted over 500 pounds of food waste at the place where I currently work, the hummus shop. I've composted what would otherwise get trashed using a city lot that I'm contesting from the city in Dorchester. I've also diverted a lot of food waste by giving it to people along Mass Ave after work instead of throwing the food away. I worked at the Boston Public Market as well, a project that the city has close ties to and saw the ridiculous amount of compost and recycling that gets trashed. We know that the city and the country trash way too much food, 100 billion pounds annually, while we speak endlessly about hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. Individual bins that each home places out on the sidewalk is not a model that works for trash and recycling. It is equally inefficient for compost collection.

I've submitted a page detailing my ideas more fully, but here are some of the basics. One, identify high traffic zones in community spaces like gardens, libraries, and schools for centralized drop-off. Residents can get vouchers for one pound of produce for every five pounds of food waste that they divert. Two, create compost plants in the city. More jobs and values return to residents. Three, my Boston Summer Games idea is going to the participatory budget right now. It aims to clean the city by gaming fire and later cleanup and rebuilding civic pride through social clout. It also works for compost if city leaders want to work with me to iron out this legislation. We should also be incentivizing the food industry to donate food and penalize it for wasting resources. Some ideas include an opt-in program for restaurants and grocery stores to donate food in exchange for tax credits, as well as a collective compost as well as a collective industrial compost contract that sends compost to local farms in exchange for reduced produce prices for city buyers. I look forward to the council to reach out to start implementing these ideas. I would also like to remind the council that I submitted a similar policy sheet concerning traffic at the Hyde Park Avenue.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you for your punctuality. Okay. Now we're going to go with council questions, starting with sponsor, Councilor Durkan. You have, I'm not gonna time you.

Go ahead. Thank you so much, Councilor Pepén, Chair Pepén. Since the curbside waste collection programs launch in 2022, what has participation looked like over the past three years? I know the maximum enrollment is currently 30,000 households. How many residents are enrolled today? How many are on the wait list? Do you have data based on neighborhood or district?

We do. Currently, there are about 27,000 enrolled today. 27,000, a little bit over 27,000, 27,547 to be exact, households. and there are 638 people currently on the wait list today.

And so you could probably take them off of the wait list given that the

So right now, the city, due to budget restrictions, we're in a hold and a freeze on adding more people. And we're hoping that over the next budget cycle, we'll be able to bring these people off the wait list.

What do you quantify as the current cost of both the curbside composting program and Project Oscar?

The operating budget for the curbside composting is $3.3 million. And the Project Oscar program is about $135,000 for the 20 locations. OK. That doesn't include the curbside.

Do you have an estimate on the cost of per ton of food waste processed through these programs?

We have tried to come up with some estimates. It's pretty costly in terms of what we're getting per ton now. It's roughly, for collection and disposal, it's somewhere in the $1,000 a ton range. which is fairly costly. That's why we're doing a lot of our focus on educating residents on how to use the bins more effectively. The more food waste we get in the stream, the lower those costs will kind of drive down.

Does the data to you demonstrate the city-wide impact and success of these programs so far?

Yeah, I mean, the programs are incredibly successful. I think getting it out of our stream has multiple effects. I think it's taking stuff out of landfill and those things and getting them into compost. I think there's a lot of benefits to that. I think, as the Councilor mentioned, I think getting food waste out of our trash stream helps with the rodent population immensely. So I think along those things. And I also think Boston has been a very forward-looking city, and we're looking at future waste bans that are coming down from MassDEP. We just went through the mattress ban, which was impactful as city, and luckily we were able to kind of

and so on.

We're getting more heads up from MassDEP that they're looking at bands coming down the pike. Boston is in a great place for having a system and a structure in place to service those bands and the ability to scale up it's going to become about resources and costs yeah and it's like we do need to laud where we've

where we started and where we are now. But there's still so much more work to do. And I know we've talked about in other hearings about like just the amount, there's no limit on what an individual can throw out you know on the sidewalk and I know I'm trying to keep all my questions today about composting but it's all interrelated because if you can throw out What is the incentive you have to divert some of this waste into composting? So looking ahead to next year's budget, what level of funding do you expect will be proposed for the composting programs? And with the current funding level, would you be able to continue these programs as they are, or would you need more resources given new contracts?

We would definitely need more resources. I think we would like to continue to scale up these programs, educate residents to become part of these programs. In anticipation of the food ban that we expect to happen for residential, it looks like 20, 30 or later. But we want to continue to organically grow this program. We don't want to have wait lists. We want to have enough resources where we're not keeping people from signing up for these particular programs. So that's what will be our budget ask. I also think the city should be looking with the state in partnership with the state Maybe other jurisdictions around us about how to build up some food waste capacity around us where we can bring these these materials to sites around there closer to the city.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there was $4 million in ARPA money that was slated that my predecessor, Councilor Bak, had slated for We just weren't able to get that money redirected. I'm just curious if there was, obviously I know those funds were like once in a lifetime, but if there were additional federal resources or state resources available, for a City of Boston composting facility. I'm just curious essentially what went wrong there in terms of getting that off the ground so that if there are resources available in the future, we'd have the ability to do that.

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge that Boston is having with that is finding the land to build a facility like that.

Well, all the BRA-owned parking lots.

We did a siting study a few years ago that identified some parcels in the city I think we were competing with other initiatives in terms of housing and other things like that. So the city never was able to identify a site within the city. There were sites around the city that were looked at.

Well, and we've just passed an ordinance saying affordable housing gets first.

and many more. A couple of weeks ago, it's about 40, 50 miles north of Boston. These companies are looking to come to Boston. They're looking for ways to get here, but it will take the city of Boston identifying some land. either in the city or close to the city.

Okay so one of the data inquiries I'm going to put like sort of on the record I know that you both couldn't answer this question is whether there is any city-owned land where housing is a forbidden use, because it sounds like we should start there, like any industrial-owned, because obviously you don't want a composting facility Super close to residential. He did time me.

I did. Just to be fair.

Okay. I have like a few more questions. Go ahead.

Okay.

If more funding were available, what would be the most effective or efficient way to use it? Obviously, it sounds like it's a lot more efficient to not pick up curbside. but obviously less people are probably using the Project Oscar bins than are using the curbside bins. So how do we weigh that in terms of efficacy?

They're both incredibly effective, the programs. The curbside, getting in front of your house, building up that capacity is hugely important.

Oh, sorry, I mean from a cost efficiency standpoint.

From a cost efficiency. I mean, I think we could drive down costs by getting more people to use curbside pickup, but also to use it to its full capacity. When we go out there and we pick up a bin that's a third full or a quarter full and they're not using it in full capacity, it does drive up the particular cost. It's spending a lot of time educating residents of all the things that can go in there, how much can go in there, and how much you can divert away. and using it full capacity.

Yeah, we need to get some sort of neighborly stuff going on because the folks that are filling up their third of a bin, like I would... I mean, I live in an apartment building that's over six units, so I'm not eligible for the curbside composting. I'm really grateful for the Project Oscar option. I mean if there was a nearby neighbor who had a half-filled bin every week I would be happy to throw my stuff in with them and be more efficient I mean more effective for me than to walk it down the hill you know so I'm just wondering if maybe there's some Stuff that could happen, you know, just neighbor to neighbor. Okay, given that there are limitations in the processing capacity and technology, what is the path forward for responsibly expanding the compost access across Boston? Like until we have this big investment in a facility, like how,

I mean, I think it's the approach we're currently taking is to grow the curbside program organically. It's like we don't want to limit residents.

Organically.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But we don't want to limit residents. We don't want to have wait lists for the long term. If people that are excited about composting, we want to be able to put the bin in their place. Let them compost as much as we can and continue to grow this program. There's some debate about what it would look like if Boston was fully composting, how many residents that would mean. We think it's probably somewhere in the 75 to 100,000 residents if we were almost at full capacity. We would want to continue to grow with that as we look at the mass waste bin that's coming in front of us.

Okay, and this is the big impetus for this hearing was has the city considered increasing the maximum number of units allowed in a residential building to be part of the program? It's currently six or fewer. That does feel like it puts an undue burden on areas where I live that are extremely dense. It feels like I'm and other people are, I mean, I actually think, yes, giving me my own individual bin might not make sense because you know I live in a small apartment. But what if we had some neighborly coordination and it was super effective for you to pick up from a specific building that had 12 units?

Yeah, I mean, so that's a deeper question in terms of like our trash and recycling streams. It's very difficult for municipalities to service large buildings on the trash and recycling. We do the same restrictions with our CRT materials, Mattress Bands. It's very hard for cities to service. We are one of the only cities in the country that services large buildings for trash. Most other cities do it privately. It's the responsibility of the building. and it's a very hard model to replicate. We've worked with residents, Maddie's worked very closely with large residents about Finding new locations for Project Oscar and having that as an alternative, but I agree. I think what you'll find is most cities nationally still fall short about how to service large buildings on all trash teams, but especially food waste.

Okay, I will yield back to the chair because I know I'm over my time.

Thank you, Councilor Durkan. I think kind of piggyback. Piggybacking a little bit of what Councilor Durkan was talking about, not just extending to six units or more buildings, but to more business corridors. Have we looked at how we can add Composting Bains or Project Oscar to areas that have a high density of businesses, especially restaurants?

So currently none of the city programs are for commercial entities. We don't serve as commercial entities at all for our waste stream, so we haven't particularly looked at that. When we put out Project Oscar bins, they are for large buildings or any resident that wants to use them. We don't have them scaled up to service commercial type entities. We do tend to follow what MassDEP puts in front of us as they ban items. They already have a commercial food waste ban of I think it's a half ton a week. Is that a half ton a week? I think if you have more than a half ton of food waste a week, You are required as a business to get a food composting facility. I think they're going to shrink those numbers over the next couple of years. So more small businesses will have to comply with that. but we tend to follow what MassDEP puts in front of us and we don't serve as commercial entities in the city of Boston.

Okay. The city runs its own composting program, right? Like we don't contract out?

No, we contract it out. The curbside is contracted out and also the project Oscar is serviced by a contractor.

What about the trucks that, the ones that I see at least in my district, they have a City of Boston logo?

Yeah, it's a partnership with a contractor, Garbage to Garden. They're our contractor and it's a joint partnership that they service our food waste curbside.

Okay. And I know I'm curious and I'm pretty sure residents are curious too for a civics purpose. What happens? So like you put your compost in the bin, what happens? I'm curious, what actually happens in the process of that?

So for the curbside collection program, the food waste will go to one of two places. It'll either go to the core facility in Charlestown where it'll start the anaerobic digestion process and eventually make its way to the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District to their water treatment plant up there where it is made into clean energy, like they capture the methane that's released from it. and they use that to create clean energy to power the entire plant and give back to the grid, which is pretty amazing because water treatment plants take a lot of energy and then the otherwise sometimes the food waste will go to brick and farms in South Hamilton Massachusetts where it's made into a compost which can then be used and added to soil For Project Oscar, all of those food scraps go to composting and Black Earth, our vendor, has a composting site in Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts.

I'd love to take a trip one day, see how it all works.

Definitely.

Yeah. Okay, that's great. Dennis, I heard you say like it would be a goal to extend the program and in terms of budget, like, Is there a number that could help extend it?

Just to help us continue to grow it organically at the curbside, it's $3.3 million now. We had to put it on a wait list over a $500,000 addition in budget that we didn't get. That's why we had to create the wait list. So just to continue to grow that, that 3.3 becomes 4, and then just so we can continue to grow that across the city and just allow people that want to participate in this program to continue to do so. Okay. Just to have that in the back of my head before budget season gets here. The city has really done a great job in providing the support around it in our team. Like I said, I think I mentioned earlier, Maddie's position was created based upon the food waste goals we have at the city. We have some outreach coordinators that work in Maddie's unit. and many more that are out there, they're tabling events, they're working on all kinds of events across the city to get people to understand Foodways, to sign up for the Foodways program. So we've definitely put some resources in that sense and that's what got it to grow

I think we continue to use those resources and if we have the resources to not have wait lists just to continue to expand it.

A bit of question that I have is the relationship with Boston Public Schools. As I mentioned previously, I remember when I was a kid or student at BPS, you know, I had the Boston Water and Sewer Commission come in. I learned about recycling as well. is one is there ever any efforts to teach students about composting and learning about the importance about composting and two more of an actual partnership with having a composting than at BPS locations. Obviously, not every student eats every single one of their chicken nuggets or whatever they're eating that day, so I'm pretty sure that they have to throw those away somehow. I would love to see compost be in practice at all of our schools. So have we thought about that in the near future?

Yeah, so to answer your first question, We work closely with BPS's sustainability team and we go into some of the schools. Usually it's by request, if a teacher requests that we come in. And myself and my team will go and give a presentation to the classroom. Talk to children about composting and other waste services just to explain the process and why it's important to do it. The BPS sustainability team, they've done actually some great work in the past couple years and they have over 40 schools that have been doing back of the house composting. where they have the composting bins in the kitchen. So any of the food scraps. 40 schools. Over 40, yes. Which is amazing. It's grown significantly. They have a handful of schools that have front of house composting. where the students themselves are separating their extra chicken nuggets or anything left over, separating those out. I do know that they could use a little bit more education working with the students to build that up and to continue building it to other schools as well.

But it is a topic that they're discussing and we're in close conversation about it.

I also just to add I think if you talk about adding budget I think adding budget to the Boston Public Schools sustainability programs I think would be a huge win I think a schools is a great way to educate all residents when it's when it's done in our schools so just to continue to expand those programs. I know the new BASTE plan for for Food Waste looks to ban food waste in schools probably within the next two to three years. So I think that Boston Public Schools will be coming with some budgetary asks in terms of expanding programs within their ecosystem.

Maybe we should also meet with them as well to learn how else we could support them. That's good to know. And when you start early, you also start to train just residents early on. I mean, again, that's how I learned about the importance of recycling. I taught my parents about it. So it was... There's a big investment, honestly, just by educating students at a young age. So I'm glad to know that. And then can we also get a list of the 40 schools? I'm just curious. Absolutely. Because I want to see which ones in my district practice it. Absolutely. That would be great. Okay, one last question, and it is, is there any partnership with Black Earth Compost, and also, have we ever considered some of this as Could we consider a contract with Black Earth Compost as they currently serve some commercial entities, specifically those who need to avoid the ban of mass DEP? as mentioned.

So Black Earth is our current provider for Project Oscar bins. They service the bins. They take care of bins. They're the ones that own the facility up at Manchester by the sea. So they bring all of our compost from the Project Oster bins up to the compost up at Manchester. They have expressed some interest in working more with the city in terms of what that type of capacity they'd like to come in They do a lot of the commercial entities. They do service for them. We also have a second provider, which is Garbage Garden. They do our curbside program. and they work with the Hamilton facility out there to bring compost and also the core in Charlestown. But there are many companies like those that are looking for more capacity in the city We toured the site in Manchester by the sea at the Black Grout site probably two weeks ago where they received, it was a couple million dollar USDA grant to build out that facility to actually to compost more materials and things like that.

They're all chomping to look at sites in the city or around the city to build more capacity. So there are grants available. It becomes about land and identifying land and infrastructure with the city or around the city. I personally think It would make a great partnership with many jurisdictions around the city, whether it be Boston, Cambridge, to look at a joint site somewhere at some point to build up some more capacity. That would be probably pretty unique. I think that's how we have to be looking at it.

And it's not a bad idea considering the fact that we really don't have that much extra land anymore in the city of Boston.

Exactly.

So that partnership could be a great idea. Okay, thank you for that. That's it for me in terms of questions. Councillor Durkan, do you have any more follow-up questions? Yes.

Okay. Well, I mean, I'm never opposed to ending early because clearly our colleagues have somewhere else better to be today. I personally feel like I know that we can't solve this issue, but I think the commercial side of this is such a big opportunity to promote sustainability in the city. So I know that We can't solve that issue and don't have the resources to solve that issue for businesses. But I'm just curious, there had been some proposals of the city around food diversion. around making sure that either food was offered, not directly into composting, but that no food went to waste, that essentially I know this is something that former Councilor Arroyo worked on before.

So I'm just curious sort of, and then Councilor Coletta Zapata, I'm curious sort of what the city from a zero waste perspective thinks about businesses Throwing out food that's good and also mandating potentially composting for businesses that because it's just me and my home kitchen, the scale is just so different. And so just from an environmental perspective, how are we going to potentially I think it always gets dictated by the state.

I know the office, the city has an office of food recovery that has people working on these Thank you.

It just feels like in terms of zero waste, I know that we're focused on residents, but it just feels like from the scaling perspective that we could have bigger impact by solving the regulatory issues Thank you. Thank you. Oftentimes, we're talking about where the trash bins are, and where the trash company's gonna pull up, and we're talking about all these very, but, I mean I think a bigger issue is how are you making sure that you're operating in a sustainable way that you know we you know we can it's just because it's you know from a skilled perspective I would love to we're all

We all care about our own personal responsibility, but it all feels like the Jimmy Carter malaise speech a bit to be like, make sure that you throw out your one portion of macaroni and you do it in some sustainable way. When there are companies that are throwing away trays of things that would be important for that to like move in a direction. So it's like, I know I touched on that a little bit in the hearing order. So I know that the administration, you know, we didn't get exactly the team to answer that question, but I definitely want to read into the record because I think That in terms of figuring out how we're going to actually do this, we need to make sure that commercial districts have some solution that works for them. And even I think the city assisting in making sure that certain commercial districts are connected with the right resources to be able to do that. Because I think about, I have Causeway, Newbury Street, you know, Boylston Street,

Tremont Street.

The MassDEP issued the ban with half a ton of food waste per week, and I think that mostly qualifies for bigger businesses, but I think they're going to lower those thresholds over the next two years, and I think you're going to see more and so on and so forth. The site cleanliness permit within ISD which requires you to file a trash plan, but I think if there was more bans from MassDEP, we'd also be filing a food waste plan as a business as well.

That's helpful to know. Well, I guess those are all my questions. Obviously, you both have been so... I know that a hearing is not the only way to reach you and I'm just really grateful for all of your work. I think it's so important that we have the opportunity to We are all interested in making sure that we are diverting as much food waste as possible. and I think that I know that the administration shares that goal and it's we're just all trying to row together so I think you can count on our support during the budget process and we're really grateful for the work that you do.

Thank you, Councilor. I do have one question that I've been curious about. I remember a while back before I worked for the city, I tried to get donations. There's a Dunkin' Donuts that was closing. There was a lot of extra donuts and they were going to throw them away and ask, can I take them to donate them? They said no. Because some sort of thing that prohibits them from doing that. Is there a law that stops them? That stops... I am not aware of anything.

I don't know if it's a liability or a law or the reason for them not donating that, but I'm not aware of anything. It's not something that we in my department would be monitoring something like that, but I'm not aware. Do businesses get to come up with their own policies? I would think businesses would have some of their own policies based upon either a law or, like I said, a liability that they may have, but I'm not aware of any. Okay. I'm just curious.

That's stood out to me and I always thought about like is there something prohibiting

I mean, I know they donate to organizations, but I don't know what draws a line. They've worked with the city in donations on some events and things like that, Dunkin' Donuts in particular, but I don't know what makes them draw a line and where.

And I used Dong and Dun as an example. I feel like that's such an awesome thing to do. Gotta stop doing that. But I'm thinking about every business in general. That's good to know. Okay, that's it for me. Cor, do we have any virtual public testimony? No? Okay. We've done area public testimony here. Okay. Closing statements. Do you want to say anything? No? Councillor Durkan, thank you so much for being The sponsor on this and for Adam as a co-sponsor to Maddie and Dennis, thank you so much for the work you all do. Thank you for leading our city to be just more equal friendly and cleaner. So you have a partnership at least in the two of us here. and our other co-sponsor. I also do want to mention that we did receive a letter of absence from Councilor Gabriella Coletta Zapata, who wish to be here, but Councilor Flynn, I was about to bang my gavel to close out. Would you like to say any closing statements before I do so?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the administration team that is here. I do apologize for being very, very late. I was at a meeting with the school superintendent at Josiah Quincy School. So respect the work you're doing, Mr. Chair. Thank you for holding this. Councilor as well, thank you for sponsoring this. And I'm gonna actually take a look at the, at the video sometime over the weekend. And thank you to both of my council colleagues in the administration team. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Flynn. And I know that Councilor Flynn has a district that could really benefit from mold composting, and he's been a great advocate for it as well. Thank you so much for showing up. Thank you, sir. Okay, now with that, this hearing on docket number 1748 is adjourned.

Thank you.