Prince George’s composting program leads the region

In early summer of 2021, Prince George’s County became an environmental leader in the DC region and Maryland by launching its curbside composting pick-up program, returning to the soil food that would otherwise be wasted. This followed a small 2017 pilot program and a larger 2019 pilot. Currently serving some 22,000 households, by June of 2023 the program should be available to 97,000 households, said Andrea Crooms, director of the Prince George’s County Department of the Environment.

The county-wide program followed a similar 2020 program in the City of Hyattsville and an even earlier one in University Park, both municipalities located in Prince George’s. Compost pick-up from local jurisdictions is rare in the region, although Takoma Park has one and Arlington began one in late 2021.

Composting is a relatively simple process, gathering food that would otherwise be wasted, including unused parts of fruits and vegetables, leaves and grass, and even paper, and accelerating the process of returning it to the soil. An inexpensive machine can be used to turn the food waste regularly, or a “compost heap” in the backyard can be turned by shovel. More conveniently, a city or county can pick up compost regularly.

Composting is critical for the environment and for agriculture. In 2018, some 103 million tons of food in the US was wasted, accounting for nearly a quarter of municipal solid waste sent to landfills according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Rather than ending up in the mouths of hungry people, this food sits in landfills for generations, where it releases methane, worsening climate change.

If composted, food scraps can instead refresh our topsoil and grow nourishing food. Given that one-third of the topsoil on which the planet depends is suffering from depletion, and 90% is estimated to be degraded by 2050, more composting is imperative. Yet currently only some 4.1% of wasted food is composted in the US.

While Prince George’s 2017 pilot diverted 5.5 pounds of food scraps per household weekly from the trash, Crooms believes that the county-wide program will eventually capture 3 pounds a week (since not everyone will participate). If every jurisdiction did the same, the climate impact would be significant, since “each year, US food loss and waste embodies 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (million MTCO2e) GHG emissions,” according to the US EPA, with even more methane released as foot rots in landfills.

Composting in Prince George’s is limited to single-family housing. The county has “not figured out multi-family composting,” Croom said, although a pilot program in schools this year is helping to work out how to collect food scraps on a larger scale.

Similarly, Hyattsville’s program “is open to all residents who live in the City’s service area,” explained Lesley Riddle, Director of the Department of Public Works, but not to “businesses, restaurants, and multi-family residences or home-owner’s associations.”

Convincing people to compost

Behavior change is difficult and constitutes much of the challenge of adopting widespread composting. Many people simply don’t understand the benefits. It is “hard to get a program up and running with clear communications about the value of compost, what can be composted, how to compost, etc.,” Riddle said.

Jurisdictions need to consider “the human challenges” of convincing people to change habits amid their busy lives, said Crooms. “There’s all kinds of barriers.” She continues. “For instance, people might not know that they can’t throw diapers or cat and dog waste into the compost.”

The ability to compost meat is one advantage of a pick-up program. For home composting, animal scraps and bones is a no-no, since they draw rats and other pests, but a larger facility can easily handle meat. In Prince George’s, composting meat is an incentive to get people involved, said Crooms, pointing to a tradition of Sunday crab fests. With the right paper plates and table clothes, everything can be easily wrapped up and tossed into the compost bin for pick-up the next day.

The county is also working with businesses to correctly label materials for composting. For instance, while many paper plates are easily compostable, those coated with wax are not. It’s all about education and understanding how human behavior changes.

Because Prince George’s is such a large jurisdiction, officials hope that “we’ll be a great case study,” Crooms said, collecting information and passing on best practices. The goal is “a human behavior analysis of what it means to roll out a program like this,” to learn how and why people adopt composting.

Economics are a barrier and an opportunity

With all composting’s benefits, why haven’t more jurisdictions taken it up? For one thing, the up-front investment makes it difficult to start a program. “It costs money,” Crooms said. “You have to have a spot for the facility, you have to have vendors that are willing to do it,” and face other bureaucratic problems as well as needing local support.

It does “require a separate vehicle and staffing run from regular household waste,” Riddle said.

Nevertheless, “We have calculated that we save money” composting, Crooms said, adding, “because cost of landfill infrastructure is so high.”

For Hyattsville, “The value for us was clear in the reduction of tipping fees going to the landfill, as well as the intrinsic carbon emission benefits,” Riddle said. In other words, after an initial adjustment period, composting is a winner economically as well as for the environment.

Composting is greatly aided by the presence of the Prince George’s Organics Composting Facility, the most advanced on the east coast according to Crooms—and one of the largest.

“The availability of this high quality compost facility was critical to our decision to compost,” Riddle said. The Prince George’s plant employs Gore Cover technology that greatly speeds up the composting, decreasing the amount of methane emitted.

Composting has another economic benefit, creating rich soil. Prince George’s now sells Leafgro gold to enrich the soil, turning what had been an expense into money.

So why don’t more jurisdictions compost? In a word, inertia: change is hard. After all, modern recycling didn’t take off in the United States until the 1970s, due to a new environmental awareness and crowded landfill space. US composting programs may be way behind recycling, but thanks to jurisdictions such as Prince George’s County that is beginning to change. In our environmentally treacherous time, composting is really about “putting the opportunity to be a part of the solution in the hands of our residents,” Crooms said.