Today, Montgomery County unveiled its new commercial food scraps recycling program.

Businesses and organizations that produce large amounts of food residuals and participate in the program will store food scraps for the county to pick up and deliver to the nearest organics composting facility located in Prince George’s County. Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection will facilitate the program. They estimate that roughly 147,000 tons of food waste was generated in the county in 2015.

From the press release:

“Food scraps are the ‘Next Frontier’ materials in our County recycling program,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. “It is public-private partnerships like this that bring our communities together in working to reduce waste, clean up our environment and help us attain our community-wide climate goals to be carbon neutral by 2035. We are so proud of the work the Department of Environmental Protection did to get this project moving forward, especially on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day.”

DEP Director Adam Ortiz said: “Recycling more food scraps is an important step in reaching the County’s overall goal to reduce waste, recycle more and aim for zero waste. The next greatest recyclable material is food scraps—and there is no reason why this recyclable material cannot be composted. Through this program, we are demonstrating that recycling food scraps is not difficult, does not cause nuisances and can be done very successfully.”