The city of Cincinnati has launched a free composting pilot program to keep food waste out of the landfill.
The city is working with composting service Queen City Commons to put food scrap drop-off bins in four groups of neighborhoods: Northside, Oakley/Hyde Park, Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/the West End and soon, Clifton.
“Our first goal is just getting more people able to compost and not having cost or inconvenience be an issue,” said Marie Hopkins, Queen City Commons worker-owner.
She says the program aims to put 12 drop-off bins in each area, so no households are more than half a mile from a drop-off location.
“This program, we saw as an opportunity to create multi[ple] drop-off locations in a neighborhood and to find this middle ground between door-to-door pickup, which is very convenient but a lot more costly, a lot more energy intensive, and our drop-off model, which is a little less convenient but very affordable, and a lot easier to collect,” Hopkins said.
Anyone can sign up for the pilot program for free. The city is able to pay for everyone’s first three months of participation through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
People who sign up for the pilot also get a free countertop food scrap collection bucket.
“When you've got your bucket full of food scraps, you go to the bin to drop off — there's a little lock there — you put the code in, drop your scraps in, lock it back up,” Hopkins said. “It’s pretty easy. The bins are accessible 24/7, you can drop off as much as you need to.”
Queen City Commons collects the drop-off bins every week and takes the food scraps to farms in Greater Cincinnati. The farms compost the scraps, then use that compost to enrich their soil and grow more food for the community.
Robin Henderson works for the city’s Office of Environment and Sustainability. She says the program isn’t only reducing food waste, it’s also combatting climate change.
“We want to pull organic material out of the landfill where it's creating methane, which is one of the most potent greenhouse gasses, and we want to reduce that,” Henderson said.
The grant and pilot will wrap up in May, but Henderson says she hopes the program is the start of an accessible composting system for residents.
“We think this is the kind of baseline and builds the foundation for composting in the city,” Henderson said.
She says the city hopes to continue the program in the neighborhoods where it’s already operating and expand to more.
How to sign up
You can sign up for the program on Queen City Common’s website by selecting the neighborhood you wish to participate in.
The first three months are free for the pilot program. If you want to continue dropping off food scraps after that, there’s a fee of $4 per month.
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