Bread crusts, apple cores, banana peels, coffee grounds and egg shells have been put on notice: they are wanted.

Lincoln County Commissioners gave Emily Reinholt's project the green light on June 18 to begin collecting food waste for a composting project in Wiscasset.

The program, which will run for an interim 60 to 90 days at the Lincoln County Recycling Center, is looking for participants in Wiscasset or surrounding towns.

“We are going to hand out composting buckets to 25 residents, then they will all bring their food scraps to be dumped into a big bin,” Reinholt said. “If the program is successful, we'd like to see it expand to businesses.”

A tally would be kept, Reinholt said, so every five gallon bucket of food scraps brought in would see a return of a bucket of composted soil.

It isn't just food scraps, however. Currently, the recycling center has composting rows of green waste and manure that it sells. The food scrap compost would likewise be combined with manure.

Reinholt said she recently visited a similar program in Skowhegan that had seen success with recycling food scraps for soil.

Michael Thompson, recycling center supervisor, said the way to make Lincoln County's food scrap program successful was to start off small and gradually build-up a following.

“It's better to start small and build your way up,” he said. “That way, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.”

In addition to giving residents high-quality soil and the possibility of income for the county, Reinholt said the program could have a larger environmental impact.

“This will reduce the amount of waste in landfills,” she said. “Instead, it goes into soil remediation.”

Ben Bulkeley can be reached at 207-633-4620 or benbulkeley@boothbayregister.com. Follow him on Twitter: @BBRegisterBen.