City Compost Bins Hit The Streets

It’s a great time to be a banana peel in New Haven — as the city has installed three new public composting bins as part of a pilot program to help divert food scraps from the landfill.

In November, they began appearing in various spots around the Elm City: dark green bins marked ​“COMPOST ONLY,” where passersby can now drop off their food scraps, eliminating the waste and methane emissions that organic material would otherwise be contributing at landfills.

The solar-powered cans, provided by the trash-compacting bin manufacturer BigBelly, are now up and running in Wooster Square, right by Conte/West Hills Magnet School; in Fair Haven, on Grand Avenue near the library; and downtown, at the intersection of Crown and York streets.

The bins are part of a two-year pilot program, led by the city’s Office of Climate and Sustainability and funded by a $350,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), awarded to the city back in 2023. Each of the three compost bins costs $3,892, according to Rose Richi, the office’s recycling educator. A fourth bin is set to be installed soon at a yet-to-be-announced location.

Using sensors built into the bins, the city is able to remotely monitor how full the 55-gallon machines are getting by the minute. Once they reach 80 percent capacity, they’re ready for pickup. Trucks from Hartford-based Blue Earth Composting swing by and haul the contents off to Quantum Biopower’s food waste processing plant in Southington, where the organic matter gets broken down into nutrient-rich plant fertilizer and captured natural gas. 

The sticker price of transporting the compost from the bins is roughly $6,656 per year. That’s on top of the $41,472 budgeted over two years for collection at nine New Haven public schools, where the city has already or intends to set up composting programs. Seven schools have introduced programs so far.

Of the three new compost bins around the city, the Crown Street one has been seeing the most action. Often it will reach capacity and have to be emptied out twice a week, according to Richi.

Anything food-based or Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI)-compostable-certified can go in — as long as you have BigBelly’s ​“Smart Compost” smartphone app, which unlocks the bins with a few quick clicks.

Fruits, veggies, bones, egg shells, soiled paper products, and plants and flowers can all get thrown in the mix — just leave the Styrofoam behind.

The current composting project is still in the experimental stages, and the city anticipates more changes and refinement to come when federal money starts rolling in from the $20 million Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant it won in December.

“We’re not sure that this is going to be the future of food diversion in New Haven, but that’s kind of why we like having a pilot program to test things out and see what works and what doesn’t,” said Richi. ​“With the EPA grant that we are actively working on, to come up with an agreement with the EPA, we are hoping to get funding to have a local processor so that way we don’t have to contract out and use those transportation costs. So we’d be able to do that, which would be absolutely incredible. And New Haven is also looking into doing some type of food scrap curbside collection, but we’re still working on how that would work.”

Mary Tyrell lived in a house for decades and recycled her food scraps there before moving into an apartment building right around the corner from the downtown compost bin a year ago. Now she chairs the building’s Energy and Environment Committee and has been leading the charge to get other residents to join in on the composting effort. She saves her food scraps in a biodegradable bag and stores the bag in a container she keeps in her freezer. When the bag fills up, she heads down to the street and dumps the whole thing in the bin.

“It’s great,” Tyrell told the Independent. ​“I like just being able to put my food waste to good use.”