City of Austin Curbside Composting to Begin Expansion in 2017, Fully Implemented by 2020

The City of Austin has begun rolling out a city-wide curbside composting program as part of its plan to become a zero waste city by 2040. COA has been running a pilot composting program for the past three and a half years and now that the latest city budget has been passed, it’s time to make the program city-wide. 2017 will see the first major expansion, and COA expects all residential Austin Resource Recovery customers to have curbside composting by 2020.According to the Austin EcoNetwork, “Once the program is completely rolled out, the city estimates that customers will be charged an additional $5.40 per month. However, under the city’s current pay-as-you-throw garbage fee system, customers might be able to cancel out that fee by diverting more of their waste to the compost bin. In case you didn’t know, the city charges you more money if you have a larger trash can. By diverting more waste to compost, customers might be able to downsize from a 64-gallon cart to a 32-gallon cart, saving $61 a year, which is about how much the composting fee will cost.”