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At SWACO, we are committed to creating innovative solutions and protecting public resources. That includes our local environment. But it also includes our public funding.

Our initiatives collect and treat landfill gas, converting enough methane to heat more than 13,000 homes in our region every year. We are working to transform a former landfill, now closed, into Columbus Solar Park, a 173-acre solar farm that is slated to begin operations in 2023 and that will produce enough energy to power more than 5,000 homes in Central Ohio every year. And we are working on plans for a modernized materials-recovery facility that will couple private-sector operational expertise with public purchasing power to invest in our recycling future. Partnering with a private company will allow us to stabilize sometimes-unpredictable recycling costs while meeting the needs of our rapidly growing region.

Those projects are meaningful, but we could not do them alone. For each, we have partnered with private companies who bring innovation, experience and financial investments to bear. Those partnerships have allowed us to dream big — and to offer financial benefits to our community.

Residents and businesses pay for waste disposal through tipping fees; our public-private partnerships have given us the room to keep those fees stable. Not only has SWACO not raised tipping fees since 2012 — we’ve lowered them.

And there is much more we can do in the future.

Almost 1 million pounds of food waste arrives at our landfill each day, making food the single largest source of landfill material. Dealing with food waste in a more sustainable way is our best opportunity to meet our ambitious diversion goals. SWACO is currently seeking a new public-private partnership for a composting facility to serve our region and to cut in half the amount of food waste entering our landfill.

The benefits of a regional curbside composting program are vast: Not only would this program reduce the materials going into our landfills, it would transform waste into a valuable, nutrient-rich soil amendment that can be used by communities, businesses and residents. Through the right partnerships, we can help Central Ohio’s food waste become part of the circular economy, too.