Where to Bring Your Food Scraps
COMPOSTING IS THE COOLEST THING ANYONE CAN DO. If you’re not ready to start composting at home, use the tools below to find nearby compost drop-off locations.
Hudson County, NJ
Hoboken, NJ — Find a map of all locations on the City’s website.
All Hudson County compost drop-off locations — Thank you @NBEarthTalks for this awesome map!
*Please note that Hoboken compost drop-off locations have a lock on the bins. In order to get the code to unlock it you will need to take a 30 second quiz to ensure you understand what should and shouldn’t go in the bin.
NYC
DSNY Drop-off Composting — Check out this map from DSNY which includes all City funded compost-drop off sites, in addition to several others!
Anywhere Else
The government:
Depending on where you live, the government may or may not be doing their job and providing a much-needed service to its residents in the form of compost pick-up or drop-off programs. Of course, these programs don’t make sense everywhere, such as rural towns where people could and should compost at home to avoid extra driving on their end or on the part of a large pick-up truck that pollutes the air with a ton of emissions.
Municipal Pick-Up — Yard waste pickup (think leaves, dead plants, fallen branches, etc.) has been a thing for a LONG time in many cities across the country. Chances are your town likely offers this. However, this doesn’t solve for the issue of food scraps. To find out if your town or city offers pick-up options for its residents check out their website. If it’s unclear on their website, give City Hall a call.
Tip: many municipalities offer subsidized bins and buckets that residents can purchase at a deep discount.Municipal Drop-off — Some municipalities, especially those that are densely populated, have found that drop-off programs make more sense. In Hoboken and Jersey City for instance, there are several locations where residents can drop their food scraps off. The City of Boston has something they call “Project Oscar”, a 24 hour community composting program available for free to all residents.
Platforms to find compost drop-off locations near you:
Whether the government in your town or city offers composting programs or not, you might prefer to engage in ‘community composting’.
Litterless — This website also has resources for finding stores that offer grocery & household staple items in bulk!
MakeSoil — MakeSoil is an online platform that matches ‘Soil Makers’ (people who compost) and their ‘Soil Sites’ (physical place where people come to turn their food scraps into soil) with nearby ‘Soil Supporters’ (people who contribute scraps). The website offers a ton of resources for anyone and everyone interested in learning more about composting: what it is, why it’s good, how it impacts communities, and tools for citizens and municipalities to rapidly create their own decentralized network of citizen-run neighborhood composting hubs in their community!
ShareWaste — Similar to MakeSoil, ShareWaste is an online platform that matches those who have material that can be composted with those who are looking to collect this material for their soil site. The site couldn’t be more inuitive to use. You search your location, find a host near you (a host might be an individual, community garden, or a farm), send the host a message to introduce yourself an arrange a drop-off, then bring your contribution to them for their compost! Simple.
None of the above working out? Get a little creative:
Compost is super important for those with gardens and farms, right? So… why not give them your goods? Check with community garden organizers and local farms to see if you can give them with your scraps so they can use it to make more valuable compost. Talk about one man’s trash is another’s treasure, huh?
Community Gardens —
The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA): Use their map to locate almost 5,000 community gardens across the U.S. AGGA also lists gardens in other countries around the world such as Canada, Spain, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, and more
Urban Farming: Like ACGA, Urban Farming has a map that people can use to locate gardens all over the world.
Location specific garden finders include P-Patch in Seattle, DUG in Denver, Vermont’s Community Gardening Network, LA’s Community Garden Council, and NYC’s Greenthumb program (the largest community garden program in the country!). These websites have a ton of other great resources, too, like tips on how to start a community garden, on how to be a leader of a community garden, incorporating social equity knowledge into the garden’s buildout, how to lobby for community gardens in your city, and much more.
School Gardens — Check to see if any of the public or private schools in your area have a garden on-site and would be willing to accept food scrap donations. Before thinking “there’s no way my broke ass school district has a garden on-site”… think again. More schools have gardens than you may think.
Farmers Markets — Check in with local farmers to see if they currently accept food scrap donations, or would be willing to work with an environmentally conscious wonderful human like you to accept yours even if it’s not something they do regularly. A good way to locate these farms and get in contact with them is to chat them up in-person at local farmers markets or to hit them up by phone. Check out these resources for finding farmers markets and farms near you.
Landscaping Companies — Check in with local landscapers to see if they might be willing to set up a system for you to drop-off food scraps so they can make more of their own compost vs. buying it, which can be quite expensive. It’s also great marketing for them to say that they help support the communities they serve ;) Remember to tell them that part.
Do you have any other ideas or resources for where to drop off food scraps? I’d love to hear them and add them to this list! Shoot me a message here.