When Jennifer Polanco moved to Boston’s West End earlier this year, she started separating food scraps from other trash and carrying them to a compost bin.
“My roommate told me that they put a bin out here and I was like ‘oh wow, it’s so close,’” Polanco explained as she prepared her weekly drop-off of food waste: a compostable bag filled with scraps including onion skins, eggshells and browning kale leaves. “It’s still an extra step to do in my routine, but it’s as convenient as it can get, so I was like, ‘yeah, let’s do it.’”
Polanco’s local bin sits beside the TD Garden, less than a mile from her apartment. It’s one of 20 compost bins the city has placed in neighborhoods over the last decade.
Since 2022, those large bins have been complemented by a curbside pickup program, which collects food scraps every week from about 27,000 residents. The program is limited to buildings with six or fewer units, which rules out people like Polanco who live in larger complexes. Still, Boston’s curbside composting service currently has a wait list of more than 400 people.
Almost all of Boston’s sitting city councilors have raised their hand to examine what it would take to expand the city’s $3.3 million curbside composting program. The conversation comes as state officials also consider expanding the commonwealth’s existing commercial food waste requirements to include smaller restaurants and residents.
Polanco, 30, who said she got into composting as a small step toward being a more ecofriendly person, said she supports both ideas.
“I think we have to,” she said, adding her view that without a mandate “people are just not going to care.”
Polanco said the practice of composting has helped her be more thoughtful about the food she buys, and she feels good doing it. The key, she said, is convenience.
“It’s part of my routine, so it’s just nice that it feels seamless and that’s really important. … I think the easier our government can help us be more green, the more people are willing to participate,” she said.
Councilor Sharon Durkan agrees. She is leading a new charge for Boston to explore expanding its composting to include more participants and salvage more food waste.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle is not just a mantra. It has to be a way of life,” she said in a recent interview with GBH News. “If people are paying out of pocket to do something that serves our environment and diverts waste from landfills, we should be encouraging that and making it easy and, right now, I don’t think we’re making it easy enough.”
Durkan, who was first elected to the council in mid-2023, will lead a hearing this week to explore the pricing and capacity issues that she suspects are holding Boston’s composting efforts back.
“We’re treading water in a way,” she said, noting that composting programs are expensive. “More people want to access this program, but the contractors that we’re working with to deliver this for our Boston families are at their limits in terms of how much waste they can accept, so this hearing is really about figuring out a solution.”
From there, she says she and hearing co-sponsor Councilor Enrique Pepen will evaluate whether it merits pushing for an increase in next year’s budget.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said at first glance, the administration embraces expanding Boston’s compositing efforts “viewing them as essential to building a cleaner, more sustainable city.”
Boston’s conversation comes as officials with Massachusetts’ Department of Environmental Protection are also discussing potential adjustments to state food waste rules.
According to the department, in 2024 the state turned over 21,000 tons of food waste into compost. That figure represents far less than the 245,620 tons diverted through anerobic digestion — the biological process whereby microorganisms break down, or “digest” organic materials without oxygen — or the 34,000 tons diverted into animal feed. Composting, it seems, represents one of the biggest opportunities for growth the state has for meeting is goal of diverting 780,000 tons of food waste annually by 2030.
Massachusetts already bans businesses and institutions from throwing more than half a ton of commercial organic material per week in the trash. The organic material, according to the department, is primarily food material, but can include things like coffee grounds, tea bags, pizza boxes, paper towels and napkins.
At a recent organic waste advisory group meeting, DEP officials revealed they are considering expanding the food waste disposal ban to cover all commercial businesses as early as November 2028, a move that would impact more small restaurants that, up until now have largely been unaffected by the current regulations, according to Massachusetts Restaurant Association president Stephen Clark.
“It was very large volume producers that were subject to that ban,” he said pointing to senior care facilities, universities, prisons and “very, very, very large restaurants.”
Clark said that state officials are scheduling meetings to discuss the potential state ban expansion. He also said he’ll likely discuss Boston’s potential expansions in the coming months.
“Food diversion is important and sustainability is important,” Clark said, adding that the association would need to see specific plans.
“Who’s going to be impacted? Where is it going to go? How much is it going to cost?” he said. “Those are three key questions that we would ask with any regulatory change.”
The DEP is also considering expanding its food waste disposal ban to include Massachusetts residents as early as November 2030.
Polanco said while she knows restrictions and requirements can be “a bummer,” they’re ultimately contributing to a greater good, even if the future holds some uncertainty.
“I am aware of the state of the world and how it’s kind of getting worse because things aren’t changing and I don’t necessarily plan to have kids of my own for many reasons and one of them being I’m not sure what it’s gonna look like 30 years from now,” she shared, adding “I love our Earth, it’s so beautiful, it offers so much to us, it is our home and I don’t see why we shouldn’t care.”
