Curbside vs. drop off? Raleigh considers food-waste composting program
Banana peels. Shrimp tails. Onion skins. That last bit of pasta stuck to the bottom of the pot.
Food scraps make up about 25% of the trash collected by city of Raleigh sanitation workers.
That food waste ends up in South Wake Landfill, rotting and turning into greenhouse gases. The landfill is expected to be full by 2040.
“That’s 25,000 tons per year,” Raleigh City Council member Jane Harrison said. “It’s crazy. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities to be more sustainable and hopefully also reduce costs and lengthen out time for that landfill.”
City officials want to launch a composting pilot program and talked Tuesday about what a pilot program could look like.
Curbside vs drop-off
Raleigh residents may not be ready for curbside composting, said Kathleen Liebowitz, executive director of Toward Zero Waste, in an interview with The News & Observer.
“I’m thrilled that [Raleigh is] looking at all this,” she said. “It’s needed. But my opinion and Toward Zero Waste’s opinion is that doing community drop offs is the best route to go. I don’t feel that the people of Raleigh are ready for curbside pickup. That’s done in other places in our country, but I don’t believe there has been enough awareness here to really do that.”
People are becoming more aware that food waste contributes to climate change, she said.
Food scraps in a landfill produce methane, a greenhouse gas that traps significant heat in a short time. Some landfills, like the South Wake Landfill, capture the methane and convert it to renewable energy but not all landfills do this.
On Tuesday, city leaders asked for more information about how a pilot program where residents bring their food scraps to a drop-off location would work.
Some council members said they’d be interested in incentivizing or contracting with a third-party composting vendor that could pick up food waste at people’s home.
Council member Megan Patton has hired a local business to compost at her house for the last eight years.
“I do like composting because I feel glad that my waste is not just rotting away forever in the landfill,” she said. “Even food waste doesn’t compost in landfills because the conditions aren’t right for it to decompose.”
It would take 18 to 20 drop-off locations to fully cover the city.
City curbside composting, and potentially adding another cart, caused some council members heartburn.
“I think our residents are canned out,” said council member Corey Branch. “Then my other issue on the collection side, contamination. We already know we are having issues with contamination with our current recycling. I feel like if we say ‘Hey, this is just for food,’ people are going to throw in what they want to throw in. And then that becomes an additional workload.”
The city’s yard waste center would need “significant upgrades” to be able to accept food waste, including N.C. Department of Environmental Quality permitting. But there’s been a demand for the service from businesses.
Composting in Wake County
Food composting is available at the Western Wake Farmers Market and Midtown Farmers Market and at three county convenience centers. Details about these locations can be found online at wake.gov/foodscraps.
Wake County is also holding a series of backyard composting classes at local libraries through May 15.
Private companies also provide composting services where people collect their food scraps for pickup on a regular basis.
Cary and Durham have both recently launched composting programs.
