Upper Arlington expects to hit goal of 700 curbside food waste participants by end of year
An Upper Arlington pilot program launched this past spring has diverted more than 40,000 pounds of food waste from the county landfill, and city officials expect it to reach its participation goals by year's end.
In April, the city partnered with nonprofit GoZERO Accessible Food Waste Services to establish a program to collect table scraps and other uneaten food at the curbs of up to 700 households.
The pilot curbside pickup program was an extension of a voluntary food waste program the city launched with GoZERO in May 2019 that remains in place. It enables people to dump food scraps at the Upper Arlington Municipal Services Center, 3600 Tremont Road; Fancyburg Park, 3375 Kioka Lane; and Sunny 95 Park, 4395 Carriage Hill Lane.
With an eye on gauging resident interest, the curbside pilot program was not designed to serve all neighborhoods. Rather, it initially was offered to clusters of neighborhoods where residents signed up to participate ahead of the launch.
Katy Rees, a performance analyst for the city's Public Service Department, said the curbside program had approximately 650 registrants as of Sept. 19. She said she expects it will reach the cap of 700 by the end of the year.
The pilot program is funded through September 2023 by a $75,960 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and $25,320 from the city. Rees said it has made significant strides in diverting food waste from the Franklin County Sanitary Landfill.
As of Sept. 19, she reported 40,356 pounds of food waste had been collected.
"Currently, we have 286 active users," she said. "By the start of October, we should be up 100-120 more than that. So we're adding on more and we'll continue to do that until the end of the year."
Billed as a way to extend the life of the county's landfill because it reduces the number of items going into the landfill, the food scraps GoZERO collects are processed into nutrient-rich compost.
When Rees and Jackie Thiel, Upper Arlington's assistant city manager, pitched the program last February, they said in a staff report to City Council it could help the city build "a solid foundation for a curbside collection program to be introduced citywide in the coming years."
Rees said continuing the program after next September likely would require a new contract and may need to go through a bidding process.
"The Public Service Department will make a recommendation on the future of the program, likely in spring 2023," she said.
David Andre, GoZERO executive director, said the program is "going great," and he also expects there to be 700 participants online by year's end.
"We have been learning a lot and are excited about carrying it forward," he said. "We're hoping we get to continue to use what we've learned to keep food items out of landfills.
"Our whole approach to composting and getting food out of the landfills is to be systematic so we have produceable, scalable solutions."
Jill Collett, who lives on the 1700 block of Tremont Road, is participating in the program and said she's composted in her backyard for more than a decade and likes the convenience of the curbside program.
"I don't have to put this nastiness in my car anymore, and I don't have to turn it in my backyard, but I can still do my part," Collett said. "The city provides a 5-gallon bucket and they provide compostable bags.
"I just take my scraps from my kitchen and I have the bucket in my garage. Every Wednesday morning, I stick the bucket on my curb and it magically disappears."
Collet said the curbside service, which she's received since May, has been "great" and she has "no complaints."
"My garbage doesn't stink in my garage, and I feel like I'm doing my part to be a little greener in my UA bubble. The convenience factor is super helpful. I mean, garbage is gross. Whatever you can do to make it a little simpler and cleaner is great."
Punting the pumpkins
The city also will continue a pumpkin collection program it established Oct. 31, 2020.
A pumpkin drop-off site at Fancyburg Park is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through roughly the first week of December.
Rees said the city will continue to provide a pumpkin drop-off site because of the overwhelming response it's received in its first two years.
"This still blows my mind how crazy this is," she said. "It started in 2020 with 65,000 pounds of (discarded) pumpkins. Last year, (we collected) 97,000 pounds. So we'll do it again and see if we can break another record."
Like the food-waste collection program, the drop-off site is to divert pumpkins from going to the landfill.
The city also maintains a diversion program for electronic waste that it started in 2021. A drop-off box is available for old and unwanted electronic devices and equipment at the Upper Arlington Public Service Department, 4100 Roberts Road, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The city collected 10,500 pounds of e-waste in its first year, Rees said, and had received approximately 7,000 pounds this year, as of Sept. 19.
"We've collected over 17,000 pounds of e-waste already," Rees said.
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This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Upper Arlington expects to hit goal of 700 curbside food waste participants
