Curbside compost program begins
City’s goal is to stop sending waste to landfills by 2040.
Determined to steer waste away from landfills, Austin this week rolled out a pilot program for curbside compost collection.
City officials are asking Austinites in 7,900 households in five parts of the city to separate their banana peels, egg shells, meat, chicken bones, milk cartons, leaves and any other organic material from their household trash and put the material into a new rolling garbage cart.
The one-year trial run will cost the city $485,000. That includes new green 96-gallon composting carts — the same size as the blue recycling bins that now dot the city. Residents also get indoor 2.4gallon food scrap receptacles, the contents of which can be dumped into the green carts, and educational and promotional materials.
To combat the yuck factor, officials are distributing information about the reasons for
composting, a natural process that breaks down organic materials into a nutrient-rich, soil-like material.
As usable as compost is, nearly half of the materials that end up in landfills can be composted. With a city goal to send no waste to landfills by 2040, compost collection is a natural next step, said Richard McHale, a manager at Austin Resource Recovery.
The city is not adding any equipment or staff for the program, McHale said.
Sanitation workers will pick up the compostable material weekly. But instead of hauling the stuff to the landfill, it will be taken to a private composting company just east of Texas 130.
A natural destination, the city-owned Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant, which combines yard trimmings with treated sewage sludge to make Dillo Dirt, a type of compost, is off-limits because of Federal Aviation Authority regulations about food waste disposal near an airport.
Under a contract awarded in September, Organics by Gosh, the composting company, will take the material at no cost to the city. Austin will have to pay Organics by Gosh a small fee if the compostable material is contaminated with plastic bags or other noncompostable trash, McHale said.
“Hopefully, the material is nice and clean,” he said.
Organics by Gosh will mix the organic materials with ground-up brush and apply water to the mixture. The compost then slow-cooks at about 131 degrees, according to Resource Recovery, allowing microbes and other tiny organisms to break down any harmful substances. In about a year, the mixture is transformed into nutrient-rich compost that is ready to fertilize lawns and gardens.
After turning it into usable compost, Organics by Gosh will package and sell it.
“We invest in this material and turn it into value that has a future in our soils,” said Phil Gosh, the company owner.
A roughly yearlong restaurant composting pilot at 14 establishments wrapped up in the fall. At least 40 percent of landfill waste was diverted, and in some cases nearly 80 percent was, according to a presentation to the Zero Waste Advisory Commission in November by Resource Recovery waste diversion planner Woody Raine.
McHale said he hopes to expand the compost curbside program citywide within three years. He had no cost estimate for a citywide program. For now, city officials also won’t answer questions about how a citywide composting program would affect monthly utility bills.
“As we are able to determine participation and diversion amounts through the early phases of this initiative, we will be better able to determine any fiscal impacts the program will have when the program is fully implemented throughout the city,” Resource Recovery spokeswoman Lauren Hammond said. The department anticipates “that organics diverted from the landfill will help offset expenses related to curbside collection programs.”
The city did not immediately answer a request, made by the AmericanStatesman under the Texas Public Information Act, for any documents that speak to how much a citywide program might cost customers.
Roger Borgelt, vice chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, said that while an optional composting program would make sense, “not everyone should be required to do this and pay for it.”
Using compost “is not a widespread activity,” Borgelt said. “To charge everyone to collect for (that small portion of Austinites) is ridiculous.”
Expanding the program citywide would not have to be approved by the city council. The pilot program was included in a budget already approved by council.
Aside from cost, composting, with its sorting demands, will test how much Austinites are willing to engage in the nitty-gritty of trash disposal.
Educational handouts for this phase of the program encourage participating households to “wrap meat, poultry, and fish in a paper towel or old newspaper” before placing it in the cart. The city also suggests residents place a newspaper or pizza box at the bottom of the composting cart each week to tamp down odors and to periodically clean carts with mild soap and water.
The city has no plans to penalize residents who don’t bother separating their compostables.
“For now, we’re focusing on educating residents about the potential cost savings on their utility bill if they switch to a smaller trash cart, which could be an incentive for participating,” Hammond said. “We’ll be looking at collection volumes and behaviors of residents throughout the one-year pilot and will see if there needs to be an adjustment in the messages we communicate.”
Austin could be among the first Texas cities with a curbside compost program, McHale said. San Antonio also is testing a compost collection program.
The Austin composting rollout has already had its ripples. Austin company GreenThumb Compost pulled out of singlefamily curbside composting collection in early November, in small part because Austin Resource Recovery had indicated it would get in the game.
Vice President Tom Rutz said GreenThumb, which had single-family compost collection fees that began at $7 a month, also found that customers’ willingness to separate compostables often flagged. Rutz said the company now focuses on apartment complexes.
Brandi Clark Burton, who chairs an Austin-Travis County committee that promotes sustainable food policy, said she was thrilled with Austin’s composting collection plan.
“Once it becomes a citywide thing and there’s press and education around it, my impression is that people will get more involved,” she said.