Central Mass. businesses to split $264K to improve mattress and food recycling
Photo | Courtesy of Google
The Raw Material Recovery Corp. facility in Gardner
Four organizations in Central Massachusetts received grants totaling more than $264,000 to help expand the collection of mattresses, textiles, and food materials as part of the Commonwealth Recycling and Reuse Business Development Grant program on Thursday.
The grant program, administered by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, expands collection of the materials and helps make collection more convenient and cost-effective for residents and businesses, according to a MassDEP press release from Thursday. This round of funding focuses on investment in trucks, roll-off containers, and bins for food materials, mattresses, and textiles.
The grants in central Massachusetts went to:
- CMRK, Inc. in Northborough for $51,100 to purchase two roll-off containers and 44 collection bins for textile collection;
- Planet Aid, Inc. in Milford for $37,995 to purchase bins and large containers to collect textiles;
- Raw Material Recovery Corp. in Gardner for $100,000 to purchase a new truck equipped with a mattress container hoisting mechanism;
- Smart Feed Tech, Inc. doing business as Bright Feeds, in Fitchburg for $75,000 to purchase a tractor and dump trailer to collect food waste for animal feed diversion.
The grants were part of more $1.1 million handed out by the RBDG program to 19 communities and came on the heels of MassDEP’s new waste disposal regulations, which were finalized in November 2022. The new regulations ban the disposal of mattresses and textiles, and lowered the state’s existing commercial food waste disposal threshold ban from one ton to a half-ton per week.
Mattresses, textiles and food waste are heavy and bulky and compose a large portion of overall waste, according to MassDEP. The new regulations are trying to mitigate the materials taking up space in landfills and have textiles and mattresses turned into new products like recycled clothing, bedding, and towels. Food waste can be composted.
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