Curbside Composting

Keeping Food Waste Out of the Waste Stream

Did you know? 1 house composting for 3 years = 1 ton of food waste diverted from landfills. I first heard about Garbage to Garden, a curbside compost service that offers households, schools, restaurants, and commercial businesses a convenient way to recycle food scraps, when I was working with my real estate client and Garbage to Garden Business Manager, Caroline Fetigan in 2017. Caroline and her husband Jason were purchasing their first home and farm in North Yarmouth. Caroline shared with me the story of how the company began and the various components of how the compositing process worked. I was fascinated by both. At that time it was disappointing that Gorham was not one of the participating towns offering curbside composting as I was ready to compost. However, I am happy to report that Gorham joined in 2023. 

Garbage to Garden is the most successful market-based curbside composting company in the Northeast servicing over 42,000 households and dozens of schools, restaurants, businesses, and events throughout Maine and Massachusetts. The process is simple. Once a week they collect your food scraps (20 plus tons a day) including game-changing meat, dairy, and bones, that are left in their branded green buckets curbside on the day of your regular trash service pick ups. The scrap bucket is removed and replaced with a clean bucket and if requested, a bag of MOFGA approved compost, the end product of the composting process. The buckets of collected table scraps are then taken to local partner farms to be composted. The company has outgrown many of its early farm relationships as they started to collect more than the farms could handle. Once the compost process is completed, this nutrient rich “black gold” is returned by the truck loads to Garbage to Garden where it is bagged into smaller bags that get shared with the subscribers. 

Garbage to Garden was founded in 2012 by then recent college graduate, Tyler Frank. He and his roommates were living in a typical urban 2nd story apartment that didn’t have green space, much less space to compost. Tyler wondered why there wasn’t a service to collect curbside kitchen scraps similar to those offered for local trash and recyclables. An idea was born. He began by advertising his idea with self-branded buckets purchased at Walmart at Portland’s First Friday Art Walk. At the end of his first evening at the event, 17 Portland residents had signed up for composting subscriptions. His idea became a reality. His mission: Getting every food scrap out of the waste stream and away from landfills. Today Garbage to Garden services 12 communities and towns with over 12,000 paid subscriptions at $19 per month in Maine. For residents wishing to compost but not take part in a subscription service or who may be located in a too-rural area for pick up to be practical, Garbage to Garden provides 26 community drop-off kiosks in Maine. In addition to food scraps, used cooking oil can be placed in a separate container and be recycled. Maine Standard Biofuels turns the oil into a soap product that is used to clean the used buckets. 

Additionally, Garbage to Garden offers compost collection for events as well a complete “zero-waste” event waste management services to give your big day the green radiance it deserves. From weddings to backyard BBQ’s to large-scale festivals, Garbage to Garden has worked with hundreds of events of all sizes, providing them with customized sustainable waste management solutions. 

The company continues to grow with a satellite operation expansion into Massachusetts in 2017 with 30,000 paid subscribers and 3 drop-off kiosks. In 2021, they purchased 105 acres in Windham, to be the future sight of a greenhouse, education center, and composting facilities. It will be a place for Master Gardener classes and school field trips. 2 Nigerian Dwarf goats and 2 Nubian goats also already call this site home. Goat yoga anyone? While not yet officially open to the public, for the month of May, they are selling home grown vegetable/herb seedlings from this new site. The plants are vibrant, grown in the nutrient rich compost. With a compost management plan in place, this Windham site will be ready to take over the bulk of future commercial composting. 

As Caroline speaks about the growth of this company, you can feel her excitement about all the recycling possibilities, the sustainability practices, and her obvious joy at working at such an inventive company. Her face lights up with pride as she shares how the employees improvise what tools and equipment they need to do the job, creating equipment which didn’t exist before for tasks that are new. But it was what she shared with me about her daughters, sweet Robin and Meredith that touched me.  “I know they see me going off to the office each day while they are home having fun adventures with their Dad or on play dates. But what we do here, our part of saving the planet, we are making a difference, I am making a difference and that is important.” The girls must be proud of their Mom. 

Think about what you can do to make a difference and make it happen. One plateful of scraps at a time.

Resource Links

Garbage to Garden (in Bath, Brunswick, Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Falmouth, Gorham, Portland, Sanford, South Portland, Westbrook, Windham, and Yarmouth)

1 Earth Composting (in Bangor, Brewer, & Hampden)