New Bedford Collected Residents’ Food Scraps Way Before It Was Cool

Long before the recycling of bottles and cans, composting, the "Green New Deal," climate change, ecology, big blue plastic bins and Earth Day, residents of the City of New Bedford were responsible for recycling food waste.

Everything old is new again if you wait long enough.

My colleague Gazelle recently reported that the New Bedford Recycling Center, located on Shawmut Avenue, which has been collecting food scraps for some time, has partnered with REMIX Organics. This partnership will process everyday food waste into renewable energy and high-quality soil, rather than sending it to the Crapo Hill Landfill.

READ MORE: New Bedford Rolls Out Major Upgrade to Food Waste Program

New Bedford residents can bring their food scraps to the Recycling Center and deposit them into the new, bright yellow Remix bins for processing.

This news got me reminiscing about when I was a kid, and most homes in New Bedford had subterranean swill pails in the yard near the trash cans where residents would dump food scraps.

On collection day, trash collectors would step on a pedal to bring the pail to the surface, carry it out to the swill collection truck, empty it, and then return the pail to the underground location.

I was born in 1958, so this had to be still happening well into the 1960s or even early 1970s.

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There are no records available that I am aware of to explain what happened to the swill once it was collected, or when and why the practice stopped.

Whenever I need help with research or an old photo to help tell a story about New Bedford's past, I call on Jay Avila, Publisher of Spinner Publications.

"No, you're not imagining that," Avila said. "Joe Thomas, the publisher here, used to do that when he was younger and remembers having to go into the yards, kick the cans to get the rats out, bring the cans to the truck to empty them, and bring them back into the yard."

"I used to have a house that had a can in the ground," Avila said. "I was told that they would use it to burn the trash, and the city would take the ash. Not sure how true that is, but that's what an old-timer had told me."

I also recall that as a kid, the garbage collectors would come into your yard and haul your cans out front to the curb, and then return them to the yard when they were empty. I also seem to recall trash collection was twice-weekly back then.