Update: our building's compost bin finally hit 500 lbs diverted in 4 months

I manage a 24 unit building in Portland and we started a compost program back in March after a tenant meeting where one guy said he'd been driving his food scraps to a drop off across town for 2 years. I honestly figured we'd get maybe 100 lbs by summer and half the bins would be full of plastic bags. We just weighed in at 512 lbs diverted since March 3, which the city's waste dashboard says is about the same carbon savings as not driving 900 miles. The weird part is what got people on board: a laminated sign showing that one banana peel takes 2 years to break down in a landfill. I know that number gets thrown around a lot but seeing tenants actually stop and read it, then go grab the little counter bin we handed out, was a real shift. Curious if anyone here runs a compost setup in a rental building and how you got past the smell complaints, because that's our next hurdle before winter.

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oliver18410d ago

That banana peel sign thing is genius, way better than just handing out bins with no context. Bet if you made a simple sign for the smell too, like "keep the lid on and it won't stink" people would actually do it. Half the battle is folks not knowing the little stuff.

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