Fayetteville, Arkansas, partners with Ozark Compost on pilot program

Fayetteville, Arkansas, has introduced a new curbside composting pilot program in partnership with Ozark Compost and Swap of Northwest Arkansas, offering bi-weekly food waste pickup. 

The city has a similar pickup program established for commercial use but wanted to make composting more accessible for residents, according to the city's Recycling and Trash Collection Department.

Multiple food waste drop-off points are located throughout the city but can be inconvenient for some. Tina Flakowitz, operations manager for Ozark Compost, tells the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the more options residents have to divert waste, the better the results tend to be.

“We have a landfill that's currently approaching capacity, so it's an essential need for our community -- and typically, the more options available is how you actually get those diversion rates to an impressive level,” she says.

The primary goal of the program is to divert as much food waste from the landfill as possible, contributing to the city's goal of diverting at least 40 percent of waste from the landfill. About 3,000 pounds of food waste, or about 1.46 tons, were collected in the first month of the program.

Fayetteville shares one landfill, located in Tontitown, with the surrounding area. According to its owner and operator Houston-based WM Inc., the landfill has about 10 years left of capacity. 
The pilot program accepts around 250 residents per month and will last six months. The program is available for Fayetteville residents but is not currently accepting apartments.

Once residents have completed their month of the pilot program, they are given the option to continue as paid customers of Ozark Compost and Swap.

The city will review the data collected when the pilot ends and decide whether to make it a permanent program.