ADDISON COUNTY — Our Jan. 6 story about business composting and Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law inspired some feedback and questions from Addison County Solid Waste Management District residents. 
ACSWMD’s Public Outreach Coordinator Jessie-Ruth Corkins took a moment to offer some additional information and clarification. 
“People have called wondering how to handle meat scraps because they’ve heard meat and bones shouldn’t go in home compost piles,” Corkins said in an email to the Independent. 
This is correct, she confirmed. 
Residents and businesses practicing backyard composting are exempt from the new law and should continue to put their meat scraps in the trash after July 1. 
However, citizens who are not doing their own composting, and who will opt instead to drop off their food scraps or have them hauled away, will be expected to compost their meat scraps along with their other food. 
Our Jan. 6 story also contained a couple of errors. 
Beginning July 1, 2020, the requirements for commercial haulers are narrower than previously reported. Such haulers must offer separate collection of food scraps to nonresidential customers and apartment buildings with four or more residential units, and deliver them to a processing location such as a composting or anaerobic digestion facility, Corkins explained. 
And while Vermont Natural Ag Products has partnered with the ACSWMD to compost the county’s food scraps, it puts those scraps into bulk, rather than bagged products. 
We regret the errors. 
Finally, Corkins wanted to remind everyone to remove produce stickers and dispose of them separately from their food scraps. 
“Produce stickers are plastic and not compostable,” she explained. They’re also “a common nuisance to large-scale composters because they are tough to screen out.”