Matthew Moore: The city of Fayetteville is expanding its residential composting program. This moves it from a pilot to a city supported and integrated program through the Recycling and Trash Collection division. Faebyan Shields is an environmental educator for the city. She joined me last week in the Bruce Nan Applegate News Studio to talk about the growth of the program. She says the main reason they were able to expand this into a fully fledged program was the excitement from residents to do composting in this manner.
Faebyan Shields: So we have the folks that tried it, wanted to keep on the service, and we also collected over 53,000 pounds of food waste. And that was a big indicator for us to continue to figure out how we’re going to make this a city service program.
Moore: So, let’s maybe track back to the pilot program initially. So let’s talk about what happened there and what those outcomes kind of meant for moving towards making this a citywide thing.
Shields: Yes. So we started with six months of the pilot just to see how things were going to land. Ozark Compost has brought, you know, collections to us directly. And we operate in a way that was unusual for our facility and having, you know, a third party come into our grounds to process, but as we recognize that Ozark Compost did an amazing job with keeping contamination, so there wasn’t anything in the food waste that wasn’t supposed to be. Microplastics are a big issue, as you probably already know. And we also noticed the great customer service that Ozark Compost was providing. Having that clean bucket at the swap was just really dreamy for a lot of folks. And just having that opportunity to make an impact with something that was measurable for folks to see that they were doing something so their actions actually had an outcome. And so that for that first six months, we started to navigate, as we started to see people sign on and continue to be excited about, like, okay, well, what does this look like for part two of the pilot and extending it?
And so when we extended the part two of the pilot, we started to, again, see registration never decreased. We had continued excitement. And collections, of course, during the summer, are usually higher in weight because they’ve got watermelons and a lot of those heavier things. So we were seeing some really increased diversion amounts. So we created a plan to work with our utility department and our department, along with our division, and navigate how to get everybody on board with transitioning this to a city service. And we are just so excited that everything fell into place.
Moore: For someone who was maybe involved in the pilot program and wants to continue doing the citywide program, what might look different?
Shields: So for their actual service, it’s going to be exactly the same. So they’ll still get a biweekly pickup. So every other week. And they’ll also get that clean bucket at the exchange so they won’t see any differences in that matter. The big thing that will change will be the price. So it will be $15.90 assigned to your utility bill. And it’s open to single-family residences and multifamily. There will be some service areas that might have a waitlist just due to expanding this. You know, we have to make sure that we are also being mindful of our emissions impact. So Ozark Compost will have the service areas that might have a waitlist. And once they grow to a certain density, then we can kind of open up that area for service. So for the most part, collections will not look any different. It’s the pricing that will be the big difference.
Moore: The last time you and I spoke, one of the areas that you were talking about trying to figure out how to make it happen was multifamily housing, whether that’s apartment buildings or whether that’s duplexes or things like that. Is that going to be an option for folks who live in those sorts of housing capacities?
Shields: Yes. It will be a case-by-case basis based on Ozark Compost’s capacity and ability to get into the area. There will be some places that might not qualify due to their location of being maybe on the very top floor, things of that nature. But having access to your utility bill is going to be a big one. So there might be some folks that might not have access to their utility bill, and that would be when they would reach out to Ozark Compost to see what their options were from there. But yes, we are opening this up to residents of all kinds, and if you are not able to sign up for the collection, you are able to use our eight drop offs.
So we did expand our drop-off collection last year with some new drop-off containers. And so folks will have that opportunity to have more convenient locations close to them. But yeah, we’re really excited that we can open this up to more folks than just the people that we serve with recycling and trash at the curb for single-family residences.
Moore: When you talk about people having access to utilities, it typically means renters, right? People who might have utilities like all included within their rent.
Shields: Yes, exactly. So we have seen that a couple of times. And there are some opportunities to work with your landlord. So that’s another exciting opportunity is that property owners can actually get involved with this as well, so they can provide this access to their residents by just having a conversation with them and providing them the opportunity to have it added to their utility billing. So it’s not necessarily out of the case that they want, but we know that there are those nuances that might come up.
Moore: 700 sponsors available in the initial spring rollout. Does that include folks who have been a part of the pilot and are continuing on?
Shields: So the folks that had signed up for the program are already going to be moved into our utility department’s system automatically, so they don’t have to do anything extra. For folks that did not want to continue the service after the pilot, they will need to go back into the registration form we have on our website and reapply. We ask that you have your utility account number on there, but we do say optional for folks that may not at that very moment be able to get access to their bill. We can look that up, but it will expedite the process if they’re able to enter that in there. But they will sign up and get back into the program by going through that registration form.
Moore: Let’s talk a little bit more about the density of this. I mean, like an element of composting, right, is trying to reduce our carbon footprint. It’s trying to be as net positive as we can in this capacity. For folks who want to do their part and maybe aren’t capable to be a part of it now because of a lack of density or these other things, what are some ways that they can be involved in their own way, whether that’s thinking about how to compost at their own home or thinking about how to work with Ozark Compost in a way outside of this city structure?
Shields: Absolutely. So folks actually have a couple of different options just depending on your household and of course what that looks like. If you have access to a backyard or even a community garden, you can start your own backyard composting. We have some information on our website about how to easily get started. And of course we always tell people about the Master Gardener group that works with the Cooperative Extension and how experienced an educator they are with starting different kinds of composting systems outside for personal use.
However, we have a giant commercial program that can take in food waste that is not often wanted in the backyard, such as meats, bones, cheeses, and compostable plastics. And once those come to our commercial facility, they will do what they’re supposed to do or they might not do it in the backyard. So if folks want to compost more than just their veggie scraps in their backyard, then they can use our drop-offs located around the city, and we plan on growing those as well this year to make it as convenient as accessible as possible. So yeah, folks that want to try it in a different way can go through the drop-off option or start their own backyard composting.
Moore: When we were sitting here together about a year ago, I know that you had aspirations and goals for this to be a citywide thing. From your vantage point, as someone who’s leading all of this, what’s the most stressful part of it? Maybe on a bureaucratic level or a managerial level? For you personally, what’s the hardest part about this?
Shields: That’s a great question. Difficulty ranges on people's perspectives on things. And honestly, I found most of this process incredibly beautiful. I have not really had any moments where I was like, this is not going to work. We’ve always just had moments of like, how can we make it better? So when thinking about challenges, I think the biggest thing is always making sure we get everybody at the table. There’s so many people involved in this, so it definitely wasn’t just me. I am helping with coordinating all the efforts, of course. So I don’t want to diminish that. But there are so many people involved in this that honestly the most challenging is making sure that everybody that needed to be at the table was there. Because it takes all of us to make something like this happen.
Faebyan Shields is an environmental educator for the city of Fayetteville. You can find more details about how to enroll in the program here.
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