Every week, each household in America rolls a trash can or two out to the curb to await their designated collection day. Rarely do citizens of this country consider what happens to those mounds of black bags once they are tossed onto a garbage truck and hauled away by city sanitation workers. Yet landfills across the country are filling up year after year, requiring new ones to be opened to welcome tons of refuse back into the earth from which much of it came.

The city of Tucson, Ariz., saw that as a problem. As the second-largest city in the state (population roughly 542,000), Tucson’s one landfill could become overfilled if actions are not taken. However, as most of what is thrown away in households is compostable, particularly food waste, the city began the FoodWaste Collection Program to alleviate the problem.

As principal planner for the Environmental and General Services Department, Lisa Rotello spearheads the program, which began last January. Rotello reported that the city partnered with the University of Arizona Compost Cats for a similar project in 2021 until the compost became so contaminated that the facility had to close.

“So, at that point, the city realized we needed to come up with a solution because we have been collecting this food waste from our commercial businesses,” she said, “so we had to figure out how we were going to process that, what we were going to do.”

In 2022, “in response to escalating climate concerns,” the mayor and city council declared a climate emergency, setting goals to reduce the city’s waste. The city planned to divert 50% of waste from landfills by 2030 and zero waste by 2050.

She explained that while most people realize that zero waste is next to impossible, there are other means of disposal. Rotello’s department conversed with community members “to identify areas that could be diverted from the landfill,” and which the public would engage with, and food waste consistently came to the forefront.

The biggest challenge came in keeping the compostable material from contamination. “Contamination is a lot of different things,” she stated. In an arid climate like the desert southwest, “things that are accepted in a wet climate … can’t be accepted in our climate because it doesn’t break down the same way.”

With that in mind, Rotello knew they needed to host training sessions for participants. The Compost Cats assisted in this training, rolling their program into the city’s. With two training sessions a month, many of which brought in a hundred participants, this helped tremendously.

Rotello spoke about how the community has embraced food waste collection. “People are just so — I can’t believe how responsive they are to the program,” she said, noting that residents are very excited to participate. They can do so by signing up for a training session online, where they learn what can and cannot be collected and will receive a countertop bucket for food waste, though they can use any containers they choose for this purpose. They are also given the combination to the collection bins, which must be kept confidential to help prevent contamination. Rotello even shared how a resident posted a question on the social media site Nextdoor asking about the combination, and everyone who responded said that the original poster must complete training to receive it.

Around 3,000 households currently participate in the program. Once residents learn about it — either from social media, the city website or word of mouth — many times they want to join in. Sometimes Rotello receives applause at the end of a training session.

“People understand the importance of it. Forty percent of what goes into landfills is organic material, so that means food waste and green waste. That’s a big percent of what’s in the landfills, so if we can divert that, that’s a big step toward our goals.”

The city started with six bins, four of them manned, two unmanned and locked. “To our surprise, the contamination of the locked bins was minimal.” They now have 15 locked bins throughout the city, with very minimal contamination — “the key has been training.” Rotello’s goal is to have one location within every two-mile radius throughout Tucson.

“We also have a commercial food waste program,” she continued. It is small, but businesses can undergo training “and those buckets are actually audited to be sure there’s no contamination.”

Composting sites are not the end of the line for this food waste, either. Environmental Services returns that compost to Community Gardens of Tucson, a partner in the program, schools, city departments and parks and other citizens who can pick up compost from designated sites to use on their own properties.

There is no cost for the program, as the city absorbs those, and the Environmental and General Services Department applied for and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for $400,000. Additionally, they have partnered with Tucson Unified School District and a nonprofit called Iskashitaa to expand the FoodWaste Program. Though Rotello submitted it for an Arizona Forward award last year, it did not win, but she hopes to try again this year with the program’s expansion.

Rotello credits the entire team who makes the program possible — from the Compost Cats to the drivers, the landfill personnel and environmental scientists. “It’s really a community/city effort.” Mayor Regina Romero and city council members have been very supportive of the program as well.

But mostly the residents keep it going. “If we didn’t have the participants and they weren’t so passionate about it, we wouldn’t be successful.”

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