GILL — A new community composting plan was approved by the Selectboard on Monday night, beginning the process of getting a weekly compost collection program off the ground for Gill residents as a prior food waste pickup system is phased out.

A “composting coop” will be located near the electric vehicle charging stations in the parking lot of the Riverside Municipal Building on Route 2. Residents who wish to use the site to drop off 5-gallon pails of food waste can sign up to receive a padlock code to access the enclosure once sign-up becomes available. The placement of the composting coop away from homes, with wood shavings placed on the ground, is designed to alleviate odor from the food waste.

A curbside pickup program for composting that has been available through The Compost Cooperative of Greenfield will no longer service Gill residents beginning Aug. 1 because of its cost-prohibitive nature, with only 12 households having signed up for the service, according to Town Administrator Ray Purington and Franklin County Solid Waste Management District Executive Director Jan Ameen. This prompted the town and district to work together to implement a new composting program that will service all Gill residents.

The Selectboard unanimously voted Monday to begin the process of sourcing the equipment for the site and beginning community outreach efforts to notify residents about the new composting program. Funding, both for start-up costs and outreach materials, comes from the state’s Recycling Dividends Program, which provides grants to municipalities that have implemented specific programs and policies that are proven to maximize reuse, recycling and waste reduction. Gill has $5,250 in Recycling Dividends funding to use, with maintenance costs for the composting program also being covered by the grants.

“It’s a way to dispose of waste more sustainably and more ecologically friendly. The nice thing about this is that it will include all forms of food waste, including bones and things that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to compost at home,” said Selectboard Clerk Greg Snedeker. “I see this as being a good step.”

Ameen explained that the food waste collected from the site will not be shipped to a commercial processing plant, but will instead go to Martin’s Farm in Greenfield, where the compost will become soil for farming. By shipping the compost locally, it will be repurposed for use in the local community while also seeing reduced emissions involved in shipping and keeping excess food waste out of landfills.

Ameen believes the environmentally friendly nature of the Gill program, coupled with the affordability and its local focus, are incentives to get residents to start composting.

“Our goal is to get 30, 40 or 50 households engaged, and help residents make less trash by turning their food waste into something useful,” Ameen said.

“I think it’s probably going to get more use because it’s going to be located in Riverside, and that’s kind of where our concentrated population is,” Snedeker noted.

According to Ameen and Snedeker, more details on the project will be sent to residents within the next month.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.