The House’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) on Tuesday told a congressional panel that while Congress is well on its way to making the Capitol more environmentally friendly, it has a long road ahead of it before reaching its goal of having a “carbon-neutral” House.

“We have made a good start,” CAO Dan Beard told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming during a hearing on environmental efforts in the House.

Beard detailed several initiatives his office has taken in recent weeks to make the Capitol more environmentally friendly. They include using biodegradable, sugarcane to-go containers, corn-based cutlery instead of plastic forks and knives, and the introduction of more energy efficient vending machines.

Most notably, he noted the launching this week of a new composting initiative, which offers individual composting containers for member and committee offices.

Beard said this is the most recent addition to the “Green the Capitol” initiative launched by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) after Democrats won the House majority in 2006. So far, 78 offices have signed up to have the individual composting containers.

Beard said his office decided to launch the effort because many of those who buy lunches in House cafeterias return to their own offices to eat. Once done, nearly half would return to cafeterias in order to use recycling bins, the CAO found.

“That showed us that people care and are interested in making a difference by composting [their leftovers],” said Perry Plumart, deputy director of the Green the Capitol program.

However, given the fact that House cafeterias serve more than 240,000 meals every month, that left a lot of waste going into office garbage cans.

In addition, those returning to the cafeterias were sometimes confused about which recyclable bin to use for their garbage. This typically resulted in tossing it all in the landfill waste bin.

To help alleviate that problem, the CAO eliminated a variety of different paper bins for high-grade paper, mixed paper and newspaper, and replaced them with one bin good for all paper waste.

Another recent addition to the Green the Capitol initiative focuses on reducing the weight of the compostable material that is hauled to suburban composting facilities.

The House’s two-month-old food pulper, which is like a giant garbage disposal, crushes, shreds and squeezes the liquid out of the waste collected from the composting bins, significantly reducing the weight of the garbage.

Consequently, the cost of hauling the waste has been reduced by at least 60 percent.