Connections, Communities, and Composting

Did you know that residents of Elgin, Illinois can put food scraps into their yard waste bins, but only between April 1 and December 1 each year? It’s something I learned when I visited the garbage and recycling page of the city’s website in preparation for a virtual talk at their Kiwanis Club last week. From early December through the end of March, there is no curbside yard waste collection. I suppose that makes sense in the Chicago area, where yards are likely frozen over in the winter if not buried in snow.

When I spoke to the Elgin Kiwanis Club, I offered suggestions for what to do with food scraps between December and April. One option is home composting, either in the backyard or indoors. Compost bins that are arranged with layers of food scraps and paper and kept at a proper moisture level will not smell bad.

Another option is to store scraps in the freezer. That is also a reasonable solution for people whose city doesn’t allow food scraps in the curbside bins but who do have access to community composting. Freezing their compostables allows for less frequent trips to the community compost location.

Once yard waste collection starts up in April, Elgin residents will have the option of including food waste, but there are some caveats. They cannot put in meat or bones, nor does the waste hauler compostable paper or plastic packaging.

Also, the city charges an extra fee to include food waste. I encouraged the Kiwanis Club members to question that policy. Organic waste, including food scraps, shouldn’t be going to the landfill where it will take decades to degrade and will generate methane emissions in the process.

Pricing that encourages residents to throw compostable waste into the trash can is not helpful. What if the city chose a different model, one where composting is included in the monthly fee? Where I live, residents pay more for a larger trash can and less for a smaller one. Recycling and composting are automatically included.

What I learned from the Elgin website speaks to a point that I make multiple times in Rethink the Bins: I offer general guidelines, but policies for managing household waste differ depending on where you live.

Both my city of Redmond in Washington and Elgin in Illinois contract with Waste Management. That company puts out guidelines on its national website that state that recycling must be clean and dry and that plastic bags do not belong. Beyond that, the rules get murkier.

Individual sorting facilities in the many cities that Waste Management serves do not all have the same type of equipment. Some have access to nearby industrial composting facilities and others do not. Some can truck glass to a nearby plant that will grind and melt it, but others are located too far from a glass processing plant to make that feasible.

I wish that we had uniform practices throughout the country. Meanwhile, the explosion of videoconferencing allows me to share my knowledge with communities located hundreds or thousands of miles away from me.

If you want me to speak to your local club, community center, or library, please reach out by sending me a message on the contact page of my website. I’ll create a presentation tailored to your town or city.