PROVIDENCE — Could the Rhode Island Legislature, and the rest of the offices that call the Statehouse home, go zero-waste sometime in the future?

It’s an idea, after years of advocacy from green-minded politicians, that is getting closer to becoming reality. The Joint Committee on Legislative Services, the combined House and Senate panel that rules over the offices used by the General Assembly, has indicated it is open to an audit by outside waste and composting experts to determine how much trash the Legislature generates.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, D-Warwick, during a recent Joint Committee meeting.

“If anyone ever knows me,” said Rep. Michael Chippendale, the House minority leader who represents Coventry, Foster, and Glocester, they know “that nothing organic ever leaves my property.”

Committee members heard a three-part proposal from Warren Heyman, organizing director of the Rhode Island School Recycling Project, and Tess Feigenbaum, co-founder of Epic Renewal, to rethink the ways the General Assembly talks trash.

Both have decades of experience in diverting food and organic waste from landfills and turning it into the black gold known as compost.

Heyman and Feigenbaum proposed performing the audit twice, once when the Legislature is in session, and then again once it is out of session. That means taking the trash produced by the Legislature, or the state offices that also call the Statehouse home, opening the bags, sorting it, weighing it, and calculating how much trash, recyclables, and organics make up each bag sent to the Central Landfill.

The part-time nature of the General Assembly in the past has been a roadblock to performing an audit, even if performed by the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the state entity that typically performs waste audits for the state.

“The second part of the plan is really an information-gathering exercise,” Feigenbaum said. “We’re looking for where waste is generated in the building, and where the touch parts really are.”

After performing the audits, Heyman said, they would present the committee with recommendations on how to curb the organic waste sent to the landfill. The third part of the plan will be execution, which will rely entirely on the powers-that-be in the Statehouse.

Like with schools, Heyman stressed the cost savings such an audit could bring. While Heyman and Feigenbaum said they would perform the audit for free, diverting organics from the landfill would save the Legislature money.

“Every pound of trash you can divert is a dollar saved,” Heyman told the committee.

Rhode Island has a growing and looming trash problem. The Central Landfill in Johnston is expected to reach its full capacity by 2046. There’s no firm plan by state leaders in place to decide what comes after that, whether it’s an expansion of the current landfill, the selection of a new site, or something else.

Heyman noted that Connecticut, which has already run out of landfill space, ships 40% of its trash out of state every year, an expensive way of waste disposal.

Pushing the General Assembly to perform a waste audit, and do a better job of leading by example, has been the longtime goal of Rep. Lauren Carson, D-Newport. Carson was the original sponsor of the legislation that requires schools to compost, and for the past seven legislative sessions has introduced bills asking the General Assembly to perform a waste audit of its own trash.

“The General Assembly has an obligation to lead by example and show Rhode Islanders how they can divert waste,” Carson said.

The waste audit isn’t a guarantee just yet. The Joint Committee isn’t the sole ruler over the Statehouse’s facilities. The parts of the Statehouse not used by the General Assembly, such as the office of the governor and other state officials, fall under the purview of the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), located within the Department of Administration.

The committee tabled the audit for a future meeting, pending approval from DCAMM. The committee will likely pick the audit back up for a vote early next year.