I am working for a local government in NSW, Australia which has been gradually introducing kerbside collection of food waste as part of its existing green waste collection. We are about to roll out the program to an area which has several multi-unit dwellings (blocks of town houses or flats). This presents some new issues as these properties do not have an individual green waste bin for each unit. The likely scenario is that they will share one or two green waste bins, which all residents can dispose of their food waste into. For this reason (shared bins which do not have individual responsibility for cleaning), these dwellings will be supplied with compostable bags to contain their food waste, therefore avoiding mess in the bins. The distribution of these compostable bags is looking to be complicated. They will need to receive a yearly supply, but we are unsure as to how to get that to them? Delivering door-to-door is very labour intensive, posting would be expensive because of the weight. We were thinking of a voucher system where they cash in a ticket every year at the waste depot etc. for their supply? Does anyone have any experience with this type of program? I would love to hear what has worked and what hasn't. Also, I would be interested in any experiences with other aspects of kerbside collection of food organics.
Thank you!
Rose Childe
Waste Management Projects Assistant
Kiama Municipal Council
Australia
Organic Food Waste Collection from Multi-Unit Dwellings
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Cory
What kind of participation rates are you getting in Marin?
joe sabel
United States
...
Here in San Rafael, we have a private refuse hauler that has been having some success in multi-family units. They do not provide compost bags. They do provide training to residents on how to do the composting efficiently and deal with the "ick factor" (put pizza boxes or newspaper in the bottom of the green bin, call to have it steam cleaned every so often, etc.). They do sometimes provide kitchen food scrap pales with lids to customers, but often they let customers buy the ones that work best for them (size, shape, color, type of material, etc.). You can learn more on their web site MarinSanitary.com. Waste360.com also had an article on this recently that might be of some use. What you are getting into seems to be an ongoing maintenance and cost issue that might be best to avoid. We tend to go with a "teach-them-well, give-them-good-tools, then let them personalize it to work best for their own situation" approach. Good luck!
Cory Bytof
Volunteer and Sustainability Program Coordinator
City of San Rafael
United States