MPCA grant helps Hubbard County keep over 1,500 tons of organic waste from going to landfills

Hubbard County recently introduced a new service not previously available in the region. As part of an MPCA grant it received in fall of 2024 to support organics management initiatives, the county has acquired a side-load truck specifically designed for organics collection. This equipment will enable Hubbard County, in partnership with neighboring Beltrami County, to collect commercial food waste and transport it to Polk County for composting.  

The commercial organics collection will service a 20- to 30-stop route across both Hubbard and Beltrami counties. The new collection program will allow Hubbard County to capture a significantly larger volume of organic material from businesses, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and supporting more sustainable materials management.

During phase one of the grant project, Hubbard County used grant funding to purchase a horizontal grinder, which can grind wood and brush into woodchips and mulch. This allows the county to turn wood waste into a usable material and significantly reduces the amount of wood and brush that it burns.  

So far, the county has ground 1,427 tons of clean wood instead of burning it. The grinder was a huge aid to neighboring Beltrami County as well, following the devastation caused by the thunderstorms in summer 2025. The grinder helped to process a large number of downed trees from the storm.  

Josh Holte, Solid Waste Administrator for Hubbard County, said, “The horizontal grinder was very helpful to be able to deploy to assist Beltrami County in their disaster recovery. The horizontal grinder from Rotochopper has helped us manage our wood waste without burning. We have been able to ship our wood waste for composting and create natural and colored mulch for our community.”

The MPCA gave out $4.5 million in grants in the fall of 2024 to support organics management projects throughout the state. These projects are reducing the amount of food scraps and other organic material being disposed of through landfilling or incineration through a variety of methods including increased or new organics collection opportunities, composting, and education and outreach.  

The projects are now more than one year underway, with a final deadline of June 30, 2027.  

So far, the grant projects have diverted a total of 1,594 tons of organic materials away from incineration or landfill facilities and toward more beneficial uses, including composting. Diverting this material has prevented the equivalent of 76.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) from being emitted into Minnesota’s environment, which is comparable to removing 16 gas-powered passenger vehicles from the road for a year or powering the electricity of 16 homes for a year (from EPA WARM and Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator | US EPA).

Other grant recipients are also beginning to produce quantifiable results

Duluth Compost has gained nine commercial and 110 residential subscribers since starting this project. Grant money helped the organization purchase a truck and tipping equipment that enabled it to seek out these new customers and efficiently collect their organic waste for composting.  

Creekside Soils, Hutchinson’s publicly owned composting facility, aims to increase education and outreach on how to properly recycle organic material, including food waste. A May 2024 audit found that 24% of Creekside's SSOM "overs" contained non-organic contamination and would otherwise be landfilled. A grant funded the purchase of a Vector VT50 screening machine, which removes contamination and recovers usable organic material. In three screening events, Creekside recovered 89.9 tons from 121.37 tons of overs that would have previously gone to a landfill. The project is expected to divert more than 170 tons of waste from landfills each year.

The MN Department of Military Affairs was given funding to increase its food waste and other organics (including compostables and paper towels) collection capacity at Camp Ripley Training Center and Arden Hills Army Training Site through the purchasing of additional organics-only dumpsters, creating a centralized location for the dumpsters, and producing informational signage and education around organics collection. As a result of the project so far, the department has collected an additional 50.43 tons of food waste and other organics from the Fort Ripley location, and another 19.77 tons from the Arden Hills site.  

Curbside Compost is building a small compost site outside of Northfield. Grant money has allowed Curbside to not only prepare its site for organics collection and processing, but also to conduct an extensive education and outreach program that will help ensure the success of the project. Curbside has given three workshops about contamination throughout the grant period and spent over 300 hours tabling and door knocking with a focus on contamination reduction. Curbside has also used grant funding to aid with the purchase of the necessary equipment for running a smooth collection and processing operation.

Polk County used the grant funds to purchase optical sorting robots that will extract bags of organics from its residential waste stream. After a series of delays and unexpected tariffs, the equipment has arrived on site, and a series of modifications and installations are underway. The county is also constructing concrete bunkers and installing an aerated static pile system for compost processing.

Walter’s Recycling is purchasing food scrap bag sorting equipment that will use artificially intelligent robots to sort organics bags from its residential waste stream. Site modifications and permitting requirements have delayed the project timeline, but once fully built, the company anticipates the ability to separate more than 18,000 tons of food waste per year from the residential waste stream from Washington and Ramsey Counties.  

The MPCA will continue its focus on keeping organics out of landfills this year as it makes $16 million in grant funding and $2 million in loan funding available to organics management infrastructure and programming projects through the climate smart food systems initiative.