It started last summer as a simple but smelly survey of trash and garbage. Jamie Johnston, owner of the trash collection business McPick, and Clair Stover, Executive Director of the Block Island Conservancy, enlisted volunteers to dig through the trash collected from 34 rental homes.
What they found was alarming. After sorting and weighing, they found that almost 30 percent of what had been tossed didn’t necessarily need to go to the landfill or could have been composted. Unopened or otherwise perfectly usable food accounted for 10 percent, as did items that could have been recycled.
It quickly turned into a quest to reduce the island’s waste — important because all of the trash generated in Rhode Island ends up at a central landfill in Johnston. And that landfill is slated to be entirely full in 14 to 15 years.
On Thursday, Nov. 14, Stover presented an idea to the Block Island Land Trust. She asked if it would be possible to use the Solviken property on Sunday mornings to collect composting materials from the general public.
Stover explained that they would have someone stationed at the
