Cincinnatians diverted 96,000 pounds of food from the landfill during a composting pilot program over the past year.
The city teamed up with composting service Queen City Commons to put dozens of food scrap drop-off bins in four groups of neighborhoods: Northside, Oakley/Hyde Park, Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/the West End and Clifton. The partners made sure no households were more than a half mile from a drop-off location.
Queen City Commons Co-founder Marie Hopkins says they wanted to see if adding food scrap drop-offs closer to where people lived encouraged composting.
“We found that that was definitely true — we had almost 1,300 people signed up,” Hopkins said.
Each person received free access to the drop-off sites for three months as well as a four-gallon collection bucket. Funding came from a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The pilot wrapped up at the end of May, and the city and composting service are deeming it a success.
Now, they’re expanding the program to more neighborhoods from Lower Price Hill and Westwood to Mount Washington.
“The kind of concentrated model feels like a no-brainer, where you do this launch style and bring a handful of bins to a neighborhood at once,” said Julia Marchese, Queen City Commons co-founder.
The composting service 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.
You can sign up for three months of free drop offs and a collection bucket through Queen City Commons’ website. If you want to continue dropping off food scraps after the trial period, there’s a sliding fee scale from $4-20 per month.
Composting and the Green Cincinnati Plan
Cincinnati’s composting program isn’t only reducing food waste, it’s also combating climate change. Food thrown away in the landfill will decompose without oxygen and release large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Robin Henderson works for Cincinnati’s Office of Environment and Sustainability. She says the city is working to expand composting because of feedback from residents during the creation of the Green Cincinnati Plan, a roadmap to address climate change locally.
“Composting was clearly articulated by many, many people, so we're really happy that we're finally able to really do something... in terms of being able to respond to that,” Henderson said.
She says the city is always looking for suggestions on where to expand the program to next. You can recommend your neighborhood for a compost drop-off bin through Queen City Commons. Businesses can also volunteer to host bins.
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