Portland Composts! City to Launch Food Scrap Curbside Collection Pilot Program in May

The City of Portland’s Office of Solid Waste & Recycling—a branch of the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability—has unveiled a new pilot program that will make curbside food scrap pick-up available to just under 2,000 households in four Portland neighborhoods (one in Northeast, one in Southeast, one in Southwest and one in East). Also during the pilot program, yard debris/compost material pick-up will move from every-other-week to every week, while garbage pick-up will move from every week to every-other-week.

BPS hopes to move the program citywide by next spring.

In May, approximately 2,000 households will receive two-gallon pails that can be filled with food scraps, including everything from bread to bones. Food-soiled cardboard—like paper napkins and pizza boxes—can also be placed in the pails. Once the pails have been filled, the materials within can be transferred into the big green yard debris containers that will be picked up weekly.

Two-gallon pails will be used for food scrap collection.
Photo: Bureau of Planning & Sustainability

The reconfiguring of the residential waste pick-up program in Portland comes from the Portland Recycles! Plan adopted by City Council in 2007. Phase I of the plan expanded the materials recyclable at the curb and brought residents their blue and green carts. The new program, Phase II, introduces weekly curbside food scrap collection and moves residential garbage collection to every-other-week.

“This pilot program is all about creating a more sustainable and efficient system of waste collection,” said Arianne Sperry, a representative for the Office of Solid Waste & Recycling. “Not only does it reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by food scraps in landfills, but it also lowers the number of waste collection trucks that are on the road.”

Current Department of Environmental Quality statewide data shows that compostable food scraps and food-soiled paper account for almost 30-percent of collected residential garbage. When that material goes into a landfill the food breaks down and produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is said to cause climate change. Each ton of food waste that is diverted from a landfill prevents the release of methane equivalent to approximately one ton of CO2 emissions.

While the program sounds all good from an environmental standpoint, some residents are hesitant of every-other-week garbage pick-up.

Food scraps will be mixed with yard debris.
Photo: Bureau of Planning & Sustainability

Currently, it costs $25.30 a month for a 32-gallon garbage roll cart that is picked up once a week. This also includes weekly recycling pick-up and every-other-week yard debris pick-up. Those participating in the pilot will be charged the exact same price for every-other-week pick-up of the 32-gallon garbage roll cart, and weekly pick-up of recycling and yard debris. Also, half the participants in the pilot will receive every-other-week recycling pick-up to test its feasibility. Those participants will receive a $2.05 a month discount on service.

“We will be conducting extensive data collection, including measuring how full the blue recycling roll carts are and weighing the material we collect to ensure that our recycling rate does not decline,” said Sperry. “We will be evaluating the collected data in the fall to determine if changes are needed mid-pilot.”

Sperry also noted that any individual households within the pilot that cannot go two weeks with their 60-gallon recycling roll carts could contact BPS and work on a solution.

If a resident still has too much garbage for every-other-week garbage pick-up after eliminating the approximately 30-percent of food scraps, they have the option of moving up to a 60-gallon roll cart at the price of $30.55 a month. The resident can also retain weekly garbage pick-up of the 32-gallon containers at a price of $50.60 a month.

“My problem is that I already do my own composting, but I have three teenage boys living at my house and still need the same amount of garbage pick-up,” said David Aldridge, a Sunnyside neighborhood resident. “I just feel like this program could negatively affect those individuals who already do their own composting.”

He continued, “I am going to have to pay more so I can get a bigger garbage can (roll cart) and won’t benefit at all from the curbside food scrap pick-up.”

Multi-family dwellings with more than four units will not be part of the program.

Another issue is that any multi-family dwelling with four or more units falls under the commercial solid waste and recycling program because they often have dumpsters rather than roll carts. The residents who live in these settings won’t be allowed to participate in the residential pilot program, and will not be part of the citywide rollout next spring. In 2000, about 40-percent of the housing stock in Portland was considered multi-family.

Sperry noted that although these residents aren’t part of this specific program, providing curbside food scrap collection for these residents would be a priority of BPS in the future.

Although this pilot program intends to introduce food scrap composting to the masses, several Portlanders have been composting for years, whether through a homemade composting station, a community composting station or as part of the business composting program offered by the City.

The Portland Composts! business program has been in operation for about five years. About 450 businesses are actively participating in the program, turning about 10,000 tons of food scraps into compost each year.

There are also several community compost stations around town, and many more currently in the works.

Buckman neighborhood composting station

Residents of the Buckman neighborhood in inner-Southeast Portland, in conjunction with several Portland State University students enrolled in a Civic Ecology class, built a community compost center at Southeast 15th Avenue and Alder Street last June during the City Repair Village Building Convergence. The compost center has already had so much success that the Buckman Sustainability Committee—a branch of the Buckman Community Association—recently doubled the amount of capacity for compostable materials.

Although the community composting centers have to be much more selective about the materials that can be used—no food-soiled paper or large food items—they have been well received by residents.

“Everyone seems to like the compost station here in the neighborhood because it is so easily accessible,” said Nancy Oberschmidt, a member of the Buckman Sustainability Committee. “People can run their material down to the site and pick-up a bucket of compost in one trip. It is really convenient during the gardening months.”

Another concern by some residents with the new curbside program is that although they see the benefits of composting, they won't get the benefits of the end result, the composted material.

During the pilot program all of the collected food scraps and yard debris will be taken to the Metro Central Station and transferred to the Cedar Grove Composting Facility in Seattle. The compost generated from this material will be packaged and sold by the facility. Although several Portland businesses carry Cedar Grove compost products, residents will obviously have to purchase it.

“I know that the feasibility just isn’t realistic, but I would really like to see the City find a way to utilize some of the compost and use it in local community gardens and City parks,” said Aldridge.

Nancy Oberschmidt gives the Buckman composting bin a turn.
Photo: Jennifer Coughlin

Over the following months after the pilot is officially implemented, BPS plans on collecting extensive amounts of data on the program and getting as much public input as possible.

“This pilot program is going to be a good learning opportunity for us and the residents involved,” said Sperry. “We will have an advisory group helping us evaluate the pilot along the way and will be very interested in how it is working for community members.”

She continued, “We hope that we can change the way people look at waste. We don’t want people looking at their waste just as something that is a hassle to get rid of, but as a resource. We are creating compost, which is a valuable agricultural resource.”

While some community members may be worried about the logistics and costs associated with the program, the majority of Portlanders want to see this program implemented. According to the Portland Recycles! Survey, 67-percent of Portlanders supported adding residential food scrap pick-up and 58-percent said every-other-week garbage collection would meet their needs.

For more information on the Food Scrap Curbside Collection pilot program, please visit the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability web site.