HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Marshall University is set to open the first commercial composting facility in West Virginia.

The last piece of equipment, a large commercial digester, is scheduled...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — An annual Christmas tree recycling event in West Virginia has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event uses hundreds of Christmas trees to be...

DENVER (AP) — Colorado is wasting more and recycling less.

From 2018 to 2019, the state’s recycling rate dropped to 15.9 percent from 17.2 percent, far below the national average of 35...

BOSTON (AP) — Communities across Massachusetts are sharing $3.2 million in grant funding that will help them maximize their recycling, composting and waste reduction programs.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Dozens of projects across Kentucky are in line to receive more than $4.7 million in grants to expand recycling, reduce the amount of solid waste taken to landfills and...

SEATTLE (AP) — A new Seattle company has announced plans to bring an alternative to human burial and cremation to Washington state called human-composting.

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Marshall University says it plans to open a commercial compost facility in January.

The university said in a statement that it's working to obtain funding for the...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont's Natural Resources secretary is inviting the public to discuss a variety of environmental issues including composting.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York state agencies have saved more than $29 million in recent years by cutting back on copy paper.

The figure comes from a state report issued Wednesday that looked...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — The Vermont Department of Corrections says the composting of food scraps in the state's prisons keeps 572,000 pounds (257,400 kilograms) of food waste out of landfills every...

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington could become the first state to legalize human composting.

KIRO-TV reports a proposed bill that would allow for human composting, also known as "recomposition," is moving through the Washington State Legislature.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine composting companies are importing waste as commercial composting slows in the state.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon is unlikely to reach its goal of recycling and recovering 52 percent of the waste generated in the state by 2020.

The Statesman Journal reports that Oregonians recycled and recovered about 42.8 percent of all waste in the state in 2017. That's just a slight increase from the state's 42.2 percent rate in 2016.

NORTHBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts man is appealing a cease-and-desist order from the state Department of Environmental Protection over foul odors coming from his property.

The Telegram & Gazette reports that 58-year-old Santo Anza was ordered to stop all activities on his Northborough property that contribute to air pollution.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Composting is coming to Virginia prisons.

The Virginia Department of Corrections has received a grant of $88,700 to establish a composting program at 18 prison sites with adjacent farms.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture targets projects that emphasize food-waste diversion from landfills.

YORK, Maine (AP) — Maine environmental officials are considering using composting to manage seal corpses left behind from mass die-offs.

The Portsmouth Herald reports over 600 dead seals have washed ashore along the coastline in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts since July. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last month an outbreak of distemper caused the deaths.

ARUNDEL, Maine (AP) — Maine environmental regulators say they intend to revoke licenses from a composting company accused of producing pollution and obstructing investigators.

FALMOUTH, Maine (AP) — The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is awarding a half dozen grants to try to expand composting and recycling programs around the state.

The state wants to use the grants to prevent excess waste from being disposed when it could be reused. The six grants amount to $88,000 and are part of a first-time DEP effort to address waste management in new ways.

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A Washington state composting company has agreed to pay more than $785,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit over bad smells from its plant.

The Daily Herald reports Cedar Grove Composting agreed to the settlement with Marysville residents, saying it would also spend $1.45 million to reduce the potential for malodorous emissions.

HILO, Hawaii (AP) — The new proposed site for a Big Island composting facility is away from housing and will cause less of a disruption on the community, officials said.

The $10.3 million facility has been proposed for a site at the upper end of the W.H. Shipman Business Park in Keaau, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Monday.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — When you serve hundreds of meals a day to hungry kids, the trash really piles up.

Banana peels. Half-eaten chicken nuggets. Tater tots smeared with ketchup. Sticky juice boxes.

Schools produce a tremendous amount of garbage and food waste — Fontenelle Elementary used to fill 24 to 30 bags of trash each day that required a daily dumpster pickup.

Now, the school is down to three bags of trash per day. The dumpster gets emptied twice per week.

BENNINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Keeping food scraps out of landfills?

It's good business practice.

"Places like this produce so much coffee grounds and little food scraps and stuff like that — it's kind of not sensible to not compost, at this point," said Caley Martin, manager of South Street Cafe at 105 South St.

Dozens of Bennington businesses have been consistently composting their food scraps, in advance of a requirement built into Vermont's universal recycling law, Act 148.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Waste management services in Juneau could soon be in one convenient location.

The Juneau Empire reports members of the Juneau government today will look over two options for housing all waste programs, including recycling, household hazardous waste and composting.

CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — Southern Illinois University is turning hundreds of pounds of uneaten dining hall food into compost.

As herb and vegetable gardens, composting and other aspects of green living become more popular, many people with limited outdoor space are looking for ways to squeeze the most out of it.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An eastern Iowa county plans to explore options for keeping food waste out of the landfill, a category that amounts for about 20 percent of residential trash.

Waste Commission Director Kathy Morris said she will ask Scott County to consider collecting food waste for composting, rather than sending it to the landfill.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — The pilot program that Grand Teton National Park started to curb food waste has been deemed successful after its first season.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that from May through October, 73.3 tons of food waste was diverted from landfills to a composting facility in West Yellowstone, Montana.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Minnesota company has been chosen to develop a recycling and composting facility at the world's busiest airport, in Atlanta.

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — Washington State University wants to start a pilot program to test methods of decomposing human bodies that could offer an alternative to burial or cremation.

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/2fiY1Fg) that the school is acquiring necessary approvals to test equipment at one of its campus facilities as part of the Urban Death Project.

PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix's plan to divert green waste and recyclables away from landfills is suffering due to poor participation in the curbside composting program.

Public Works Assistant Director Joe Giudice said less than 4 percent of the 158,000 eligible properties are participating in the city's composting program, the Arizona Capitol Times reported (http://bit.ly/2fdGezn) Monday.

HARTFORD, Vt. (AP) — In a story Aug. 15 about food composting in Vermont, The Associated Press erroneously reported when the Legislature passed a law requiring the composing of food scraps. Act 148 was passed in 2012, not last month. The story should also have noted that only some transfer stations were not seeing many people composting.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Some waste transfer stations not seeing many people composting

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C. officials plan to begin curbside compost pickups alongside recycling and trash and say the city is on track to begin the rollout.