Kitchen Container & Food Scraps Collection Participation Rates

Hello Tamara,
The City of Olympia, WA added all food scraps to curbside yard waste collection in 2008. We chose to provide small kitchen collector pails for existing customers and the first 1,300 additional that subscribed (the latter were delivered in less than two years). We announced the start of the program and phased the delivery of 5,700 pails to exisiting customer over 4 weeks. We used the pails to make a statement that this was indeed a new and exciting program. As far as evaluation of success of the pails go, we don't have any quantitative results. However, our collectors never reported seeing them in the garbage, that is not to say a few didn't end up there. We know some customers found other uses for them, such as in the garage. We also know we still get calls from customer who need a replacement because theirs broke, or want a second. We encouraged countertop use and printed a short list of accepted items on the front. We think the pail made a difference in launching the addition of food scraps.

Feel free to email me with quetions if you wish.
Ron Jones
City of Olympia
360.753.8509
[email protected]

Ron  Jones
Sr. Program Specialist
City of Olympia
United States
www.olympiawa.gov

Hi,

The NSW Environmental Trust has funded a project called Groundswell, which uses kitchen collected waste, composts it and uses the compost on farms. It has a good education component. find it at
http://www.groundswellproject.blogspot.com/


Peter Dixon
Manager Environmental Funding Programs
Office of Environment and Heritage, Department of Premier and Cabinet
Australia