If things go according to plan, some Patchogue residents will one day have a way to dispose of their banana peels and apple cores without them winding up in the Town of Brookhaven landfill.

Village trustees, at their meeting on Dec. 9, voted to apply for a $150,000 state Department of Environmental Conservation grant to launch a pilot program to recycle food scraps from a limited number of households in the village.

Patchogue would partner with the nonprofit group Citizens Campaign for the Environment to run the program. The idea is to cut down on the amount of food scraps entering the waste stream that wind up being incinerated and their ash placed in a landfill, where they produce methane gas.

If Patchogue wins the Organics Reduction and Recycling Municipal Food Scraps Recycling Grant, it would be one of a handful of local governments on Long Island to start such a program, joining Riverhead, Southold and East Hampton.

DEC is making a total of $1.25 million available to municipalities across the state. The program reimburses municipal governments for 75 percent of the cost, up to a maximum of $200,000 per project. Applications are due by Jan. 31.

Citizens Campaign for the Environment executive director Adrienne Esposito, a Patchogue resident, brought the grant program to the attention of the Patchogue officials, village trustee Joseph Keyes said.

If Patchogue secures the grant, it plans to purchase five Big Belly compactors, which would be placed around the village. Participating households would be able to download an app to unlock the compactors to dispose of their food scraps. Department of Public Works employees would pick up the food scraps twice a week and take them to the DPW yard, where they would be picked up by American Organic Energy/Long Island Compost for processing at the anaerobic digester facility the company is building in Yaphank, Esposito said

If the village gets the grant, “we’re confident we’re going to succeed,” Esposito said.

The village hopes to recruit 100 households to participate in the pilot program, which would come as the Brookhaven landfill is slated to close by late 2027 or early 2028.

“The quicker we start reducing our waste, the better,” Keyes said.

The average Long Islander produces about a half pound a day of food scraps, according to Mark Haubner, president of the North Fork Environmental Council and a member of the steering committee of the Long Island Organics Council.

Haubner said that in the programs in Riverhead and Southold, people take their food scraps to one of several drop-off sites. That’s less expensive for the towns than if they had to collect the scraps from individual homes, he said.

Educating homeowners is an important part of a successful program, said Gloria Frazee, a board member of ReWild Long Island, which partners with the Town of East Hampton on its program. Homeowners need to be educated about which food scraps can and can’t be recycled, including the need to remove the labels from banana peels, for example, Frazee said.

Her organization has found that manning drop-off sites at area farmers markets is a good way to reach people. When people drop off their food scraps, a volunteer inspects them to remove items that can’t be composted.

“A lot of what we’re doing is outreach and education,” Frazee said.

ReWild’s pilot program collected 2,782 pounds of food scraps in 2023, its first year. That number will grow to 9,500 pounds this year, Frazee said.