8 Best Composting Programs in US Cities

About 90% of US households still don’t have access to curbside composting. The other 10% live in cities and counties that have built municipal composting programs ranging from voluntary drop-off to mandatory curbside pickup. Where these programs work well, they divert 30-60% of household food waste from landfill — meaningfully better than the national average of about 5%.

What makes a composting program work isn’t a single design feature. It’s a combination of access (every household has a green bin), infrastructure (regional commercial composters can take the volume), education (residents know what goes in the bin), and economic structure (collection costs are absorbed into normal waste fees rather than requiring opt-in payment). The best programs check all four boxes.

Below are the eight US municipal composting programs that I’d call the strongest, ranked roughly by diversion impact, longevity, and replicability. Some are obvious (San Francisco, Seattle); some are less famous but doing genuinely good work (Boulder, Minneapolis). Each illustrates what’s possible.

1. San Francisco, CA — the gold standard

San Francisco has the most-cited and longest-running municipal composting program in the country. Curbside three-bin service (compost/recycling/trash) launched in 1996; the program was made mandatory for all residents and businesses in 2009 under city ordinance.

What works: every household, apartment building, and business has a green compost cart picked up weekly. Materials accepted include all food waste — meat, dairy, bones, even pet hair and natural fiber — plus paper-based items like napkins and pizza boxes. Compostable plastics are accepted as long as they’re BPI-certified.

Diversion math: SF reports roughly 80% overall landfill diversion, of which a substantial share comes from food waste composting. The program has produced over 2 million tons of finished compost since launch, distributed to Bay Area farms and landscape projects.

Why it works: long-standing program, mandatory participation, fines for noncompliance ($100+ for repeat offenders), comprehensive outreach in multiple languages (the city is roughly 35% Asian and 15% Hispanic), and access to multiple commercial composting facilities in the broader Bay Area.

The composter at the back end is Recology, the city’s primary waste hauler, which operates the Jepson Prairie composting facility in Vacaville and partners with other regional sites.

What other cities can learn: mandatory participation matters. Voluntary programs cap out at 30-50% participation even with strong outreach. Mandate is the difference between aspirational and operational.

2. Seattle, WA — the curbside model

Seattle launched curbside food waste composting in 2009 and made it mandatory in 2015. The program covers single-family homes, multifamily buildings, and businesses. All food and food-soiled paper go in the green cart with yard waste.

The accepted materials list is broad: all food, food-soiled paper, paper towels, pizza boxes, compostable cups and plates. Plastic-coated paper, foam, and conventional plastics are not accepted.

Diversion: Seattle reports about 60% of household waste diverted from landfill, with food waste composting contributing significantly. The city’s per-capita landfill rate is about half the US average.

What’s distinctive: Seattle’s program emphasizes food waste prevention as much as composting. The city has run extensive consumer education campaigns about meal planning, freezing leftovers, and using up food before it spoils. The “Stop Food Waste” outreach is paired with the composting infrastructure to attack the problem from both ends.

The composter is Cedar Grove Composting, the region’s largest commercial facility, with sites in Maple Valley and Everett. Cedar Grove processes about 350,000 tons of organic material per year for Seattle and surrounding King County communities.

3. Portland, OR — the regional approach

Portland launched curbside food scrap collection in 2011. The program is integrated with yard waste pickup; food scraps go in the same brown cart, picked up weekly during the warm months and biweekly in winter.

Accepted materials are broad and include food, food-soiled paper, and compostable plastics. Portland’s approach has been to focus on simplicity — minimize the rules residents need to remember.

Diversion: about 45-50% of household food waste diverted. The program serves about 600,000 residents across Portland and surrounding Multnomah County.

What’s distinctive: Portland integrates its composting program with regional facilities across Oregon and Washington. The city doesn’t operate composters directly; it contracts with regional commercial composters including Recology, Pacific Region Compost, and Cedar Grove (which serves both Seattle and Portland metro). This regional approach has been replicable in Eugene, Salem, and other Oregon cities.

Portland also has one of the most-cited “food scraps in pizza boxes” programs — the city explicitly accepts greasy pizza boxes in compost, which simplified a previously confusing rule about whether pizza boxes belonged in recycling or trash.

4. New York City — the largest rollout

NYC has the most ambitious curbside composting rollout in the US by population. The city launched curbside organics collection in 2013 as a pilot, expanded to all five boroughs by 2024, and made participation mandatory in 2024-2025.

Scale: NYC has about 8.5 million residents. At full rollout, the program would serve more households than the populations of San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boulder, and Minneapolis combined.

What works: weekly pickup of food scraps in brown bins, accepted materials include all food and food-soiled paper. Participation has grown steadily from sub-10% in the pilot years to 25-40% in mature districts.

Challenges: NYC’s program has been operationally complex. Apartment building participation lags single-family. Cold winters slow composting. Hauling logistics in dense urban areas are challenging. Contamination rates have been high, occasionally requiring composters to charge premium tipping fees.

The composter: NYC has invested in regional facilities including the Crossroads Composting Facility in Sussex County, NJ, and partners with the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant’s anaerobic digester (which processes food waste into biogas rather than traditional compost).

NYC’s program is the test case for whether large dense urban areas can run successful curbside composting at scale. Early results are positive but the program is still maturing.

5. Boulder, CO — the small-city model

Boulder isn’t large (about 100,000 residents) but its curbside composting program has been one of the most successful per-capita in the country. The program covers single-family homes and businesses, with weekly pickup of food scraps and yard waste.

What’s distinctive: Boulder’s diversion rates regularly hit 60%+, comparable to San Francisco despite the city being much smaller. The program is paired with mandatory recycling and a “pay-as-you-throw” trash pricing structure that disincentivizes landfill use.

Accepted materials: all food, food-soiled paper, yard waste. Compostable plastics are accepted with BPI certification.

The composter: Eco-Cycle and A1 Organics handle Boulder’s compost stream, with finished compost going to regional farms and the city’s own landscape projects.

Boulder is often cited as a model for similar small-city composting programs in Fort Collins, Aspen, Telluride, and other Mountain West communities. The combination of progressive city government, environmentally engaged population, and dense local agriculture makes the model work.

6. Berkeley, CA — the deep-rooted program

Berkeley launched curbside composting in the 1990s (early adopter, alongside San Francisco) and has maintained one of the strongest programs in the US. The city’s three-bin system (compost/recycling/trash) is mandatory for all residents and businesses.

Diversion: Berkeley reports roughly 70-75% landfill diversion, among the highest in the country for any size city.

What’s distinctive: Berkeley pairs curbside composting with an unusually strong consumer education program and a city government that has been progressive on environmental policy for decades. The city was an early adopter of plastic bag bans, single-use plastic restrictions, and disposable foodware regulations.

The composter is Republic Services and other Bay Area regional facilities. Finished compost goes to local farms in Sonoma and Marin counties.

Berkeley’s program demonstrates that curbside composting can be a permanent fixture of city services, not a novelty. The program has now run for over three decades, with multiple expansions and improvements over time.

7. Austin, TX — the Texas exception

Austin is a notable exception to the general pattern that Southern US cities don’t have strong composting programs. The city launched curbside organics collection in 2017 and has been steadily expanding. As of 2024, the program serves all single-family residents in the city limits.

What works: Austin’s program emphasizes simplicity — all food and food-soiled paper goes in the green cart, picked up weekly. The city has invested in consumer education in English and Spanish, and the program has growing participation.

Diversion: about 20-30% of household food waste diverted, lower than the West Coast leaders but higher than most of the Southern US.

The composter: Organics by Gosh handles Austin’s compost stream. The finished compost is widely used in the regional landscape and farming sector around Central Texas.

Austin’s program shows that curbside composting can work in hot, dry climates with different waste compositions than the Pacific Northwest. The success suggests the model is more replicable across geographies than is sometimes assumed.

8. Minneapolis, MN — the cold-climate model

Minneapolis launched curbside organics collection in 2015. The program covers all single-family homes and is being expanded to multifamily buildings.

What’s distinctive: Minneapolis demonstrates that curbside composting works in cold-climate cities. The city’s program includes winter pickup with biweekly cadence in the coldest months, when residents’ food waste freezes in bins and processing slows.

Diversion: about 25-35% of household food waste diverted, with steady growth since launch.

Accepted materials: all food, food-soiled paper, compostable plastics. Yard waste is collected separately during the growing season.

The composter: regional facilities in the Twin Cities metro, including the Empire Township Composting Facility and Specialized Environmental Technologies sites.

Minneapolis’s program demonstrates two important things: (1) cold-climate cities can successfully run curbside organics programs despite winter challenges, and (2) Midwestern cities — not traditionally environmental leaders — can build effective composting programs. The model has spread to Saint Paul and several Twin Cities suburbs.

What the best programs have in common

Looking across these eight programs, the common features are clear:

Mandatory or near-mandatory participation. Voluntary programs cap out around 30-50% participation even with strong outreach. Mandatory programs (SF, Seattle, Berkeley) consistently outperform.

Single bin for all organics. The best programs accept all food, food-soiled paper, and yard waste in one cart. Multiple bins for different organic categories increases confusion and reduces participation.

Comprehensive education. Outreach materials in multiple languages, simple visual guides, and “what goes in” stickers on bins. The cities with the highest diversion all invest in education.

Reliable infrastructure. Regional commercial composters that can absorb the volume. Without this, the program can’t deliver. Many smaller cities that have tried curbside composting have struggled because the composter end of the chain wasn’t ready.

Integrated waste pricing. Pay-as-you-throw trash pricing that disincentivizes landfill use. Programs without this lever rely entirely on environmental motivation, which limits ceiling.

Long timeline. All eight programs have been running for 5+ years (most for 15+). Diversion rates grow over time as residents adjust habits, contamination drops, and infrastructure matures.

What the rest of the country looks like

The honest reality is that most US cities don’t have anything close to these programs. About 200 US cities have some form of municipal organics collection, but only 50-75 of those have curbside pickup. The rest are drop-off only, voluntary, or pilot-stage.

The gap is largely infrastructure. A city can’t run curbside composting if there’s no commercial composter within hauling distance. Building commercial composting capacity has been the bottleneck — the facilities are capital-intensive, require permitting and siting through community resistance, and need feedstock guarantees to be economically viable.

The trend is positive but slow. New commercial composters are coming online in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Phoenix, and other Sun Belt cities that have lacked the infrastructure. Each new facility unlocks regional municipal programs.

For B2B operators in the food service supply chain, the geographic distribution of municipal composting matters because it determines where compostable service ware actually delivers environmental impact. Our compostable food containers and compostable bowls pair with municipal composting infrastructure to deliver real diversion in cities with the programs — and remain a structural step better than plastic even where commercial composting hasn’t yet built out.

What the future looks like

The next decade is likely to bring two structural shifts. First, more states will pass legislation following California’s SB 1383 — mandates for commercial and residential food waste diversion. Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York have already moved in this direction; California’s program is the most comprehensive. As more states adopt similar policies, municipal composting will spread.

Second, more commercial composting capacity will come online in regions that currently lack it. The economics improve as feedstock guarantees from new mandates make facility investment more bankable.

By 2035, projections suggest that 30-50% of US households could have access to curbside composting, up from about 10% today. The eight cities above will continue to be the leading edge, and they’ll be joined by hundreds more.

The current top-eight list reflects the leading edge of a longer transition. The cities running these programs today are building the templates that the rest of the country will follow over the next 10-20 years. Their experience — what works, what doesn’t, what infrastructure is needed, what outreach lands — is the playbook for what’s coming.

For B2B sourcing, see our compostable supplies catalog or compostable bags catalog.

Verifying claims at the SKU level: ask suppliers for a current Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) certificate or an OK Compost mark from TÜV Austria, and check that retail-facing copy meets the FTC Green Guides qualifier requirement on environmental claims.