Why aren’t more people composting?
Municipal composting is on the rise in America, but economic and regulatory obstacles are holding it back. For inspiration, cities can follow the advice of the U.S. Composting Council and look to San Francisco, which has the most successful curbside composting program in the country. (Photo source: Recology)
Once a week, residents of San Francisco roll green plastic bins filled with food waste to the curb. It’s part of the city’s 25-years-long commitment to composting. During its tenure, the composting program has diverted more than 2.5 million total tons of organic materials from landfills. This not only saves space but drastically reduces emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas produced when organic matter decomposes in a landfill that is 25 times more potent than carbon.
The city generates revenue, and more benefits for locals, by selling compost to growers, including wineries, farmers, and urban gardeners. When applied to farms and vineyards, San Francisco’s compost improves soil health and acts as a natural sponge, reducing the need for irrigation. Farms that use compost can grow up to 40 percent more food in times of drought compared to farms using chemical fertilizers, according to the Rodale Institute. City departments also use compost to combat soil erosion and promote wetland restoration. For citizens concerned that food waste will attract rats, separating food scraps into plastic bins helps keep critters out of the garbage.
San Francisco’s waste management company, Recology, has been collecting and transforming food scraps for over two decades. The city’s compost absorbs atmospheric carbon and allows farmers to save water.
It’s no surprise, in short, that San Francisco's composting program, led by waste management company Recology, has been hailed as the “most successful, comprehensive, and innovative composting program in the country,” according to the mayor of San Francisco.
Since its inception, nearly 200 cities nationwide have followed San Francisco’s lead in implementing curbside programs. The municipalities are far-flung, ranging from Eugene, Oregon to Arlington, Virginia and Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the end of 2021, “over 10 million U.S. households [had] access to municipally supported food scraps collection,” according to a study by BioCycle.
The number is significant—but it’s still only a fraction of the U.S. population. Given all the known benefits, why isn’t municipal curbside composting more widespread?
It’s simple, says Linda Norris Waldt, advocacy and chapter relations director for the U.S. Composting Council. “The biggest barrier is that there are not enough compost facilities to process all of the [organic] material” that households generate.
The Composting Council, legislators, and advocates are working to increase the number of facilities, but local economic and regulatory obstacles have made the fight more difficult, according to Norris Waldt. Many local governments created zoning rules before the rise of composting. Without rules that specifically allow composting, efforts to establish new facilities in these areas are onerous. Local governments in the South, in particular, have levied high permitting costs and restrictions on composting facilities, making them expensive to set up.
Another reason composting isn’t popular in many parts of the South: Throwing waste in landfills is often very cheap. This is also the case in large swaths of the Midwest. The fees that households there pay to have their trash thrown in a landfill are so low they discourage composting, which is more expensive by comparison. People in the Northeast, by comparison, compost more because it’s not much more expensive to compost than to use landfills.
Another barrier to municipal composting is the challenge of finding compost buyers. When households and municipalities fail to properly sort compost, plastics from food containers can contaminate the product. An even bigger issue is plastic-laced food waste. Researchers say that more microplastics pollution is getting into farm soil than into oceans, and showing up in our fruits, veggies, and bodies. (Microplastics are also showing up in meat and milk products.) Decontaminating compost is difficult and expensive, and no farmer wants to buy a plastic-laced product.
Norris Waldt is not discouraged. She sees lots of opportunities for citizens to get active in local composting efforts.
States are already banning organic matter from landfills. (Source: U.S. Composting Council)
Pressure state governments to make permitting easier and ban organics from landfills. This effort is already underway: More than a half dozen states in the Northeast have food scrap collection mandates, and most states in the Midwest ban yard debris from landfills.
Encourage towns and cities to partner with private sector companies to find land and establish composting facilities. “When government and business work together, the government can oversee the land that is chosen for the facilities to ensure that it is on public utility land,” says Norris Waldt. It is “very hard,” she says, to find privately held sites that won’t be opposed by locals.
Support compost facility applications in your town. “When a facility wants to start up, there are often opponents who unrealistically cite problems that don’t prove to be true,” Norris Waldt says. Some people, for example, are afraid that composting plants will be smelly, but people trained by the Composting Council and state governments can effectively manage odors.
Another way to launch a successful municipal composting program is to consider what San Francisco has done right. The city’s success ultimately comes down to outreach and education, according to Robert Reed, public relations manager for Recology.
Recology has figured out how to make it easy to comply with the city’s composting initiative, including putting photographs on participants’ green bins showing what can and cannot be composted. The company also promotes composting in schools by donating compost to school gardens and hosting virtual field trips to composting plants. It also works with city officials to discuss messaging. “More participation equals more successful programs,” says Reed. “Keep going and you will reach a tipping point where everyone comes to the party.”
The success of San Francisco’s composting program helped inspire SB 1383, a new statewide law that requires California cities, countries, and special districts to reduce the amount of compostable material they send to landfills by 75 percent by 2025. “For most jurisdictions, the answer will be implementing curbside food scrap collection programs for composting,” Reed says.
If composting hasn’t come to your city or town yet, the Composting Council can offer support, says Norris Waldt. In a sign of how grassroots campaigning can pay off, a pilot program in Queens, New York was just launched, the result of public pushback after New York City’s original composting program was suspended. Says Reed of Recology, “Success inspires success.”
Lily Lustig is a Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Providence, RI.
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