Apartment Residents Want Composting Option

Sarah McCarthy and Yoshi Nakazato said they would love to have a place to compost their compostable material such as non-meat food scraps and plant waste.  They live in an apartment building in the Happy Valley neighborhood that offers recycling options but no composting.

According to the most recent report released by the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans produced about 243 million tons of garbage in one year.  That is about 4.3 pounds of trash per person per day. Twenty-six percent of that can be composted, according to the EPA 2009 report.

“There are so many apartments that could use a food composting program,” Nakazato said.  He said there seems to be many environmentally conscious students living in the Happy Valley apartments who might use the program.

A recent Western Washington University graduate, Tali Cook lives in an apartment on 21st Street.  She said if her apartment had a composting program she would use it.

Cook said when she lived with her family in Issaquah they had a worm bin for food scraps but she hasn’t heard of anything like that available to her in Bellingham.

“I would love to have compost [in the apartments],” she said.

She said she doesn’t know if she has any individual composting options available to her as an apartment resident.

Sanitary Service Company Inc., which provides recycling and waste collection to most of Whatcom County, hasn’t had many Happy Valley apartments sign up for compost collection, said Rodd Pemble, Recycling Manager for SSC.  He said, like most recycling programs, FoodPlus! is harder to implement in larger apartments with 20 to 30 tenants because it requires the cooperation of more people to make the program successful.

The FoodPlus! bins can be picked up weekly or every-other week depending upon how many residents share a bin to collect compost, Pemble said. Photo by Erin Nash

He said some people might use it correctly but others might cause problems by contaminating the compost with an item such as a plastic bag. A driver picking up the compost might pull out a bag now and then but if the compost is consistently contaminated they will throw the whole load into the trash, he said. There is no way of knowing who is contaminating the compost in a complex of 30 units, Pemble said.

According to Washington State University’s Whatcom Extension compostable items include grass clippings, leaves, farm manure, hay, weeds, kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps, hedge clippings, straw and sawdust.  Items that should not be composted include pig and pet manure, meat scraps, fats and oils, diseased plants, vegetables treated with fungicides and perennial weeds, according to WSU.

Pemble said he knows of several relatively small units of eight to 15 people where the compost program is successful because the tenants know each other and can keep each other accountable.  But in a larger complex it is hard to keep everyone accountable, especially since most places don’t have an on-site manager to monitor the compost, he said.

The Happy Valley Neighborhood has the highest total population and highest number of occupied housing units in Bellingham, according to the 2010 census. According to the Happy Valley Neighborhood Plan the number of multifamily units such as apartments or duplexes grew from 1,068 to 1,729 in a 14-year period.  Since the late 1960’s, increasing numbers of apartments directed toward student housing have been built among and in replacement of single family housing, according to the Neighborhood Plan.

Pemble said the only large apartment complex he knows of that has been successful in implementing a compost program is the Western owned Birnam Wood Apartments, which has been composting for more than three years.  He said each tenant has the option of having an individual bin the apartments that can be filled then emptied into the compost bin outside. They also have an on-site manager and staff who oversee and promote the program, he said.

“With the right mix of support the system can work on a larger scale,” he said.

Shannon Maris, who composts at her home in Happy Valley, said education and diligence would be the key to implementing a successful composting program in apartment complexes.  She said people must be told what belongs in the compost and what contaminates it.  When mistakes are made measures should be taken to fix it rather than get rid of the program, she said.

Cook said she thinks a composting program would work if an apartment tenant was designated to oversee the program.  She said a tenant might step up and take responsibility for the program if there was incentive from the property manager such as a cut in rent or being paid to oversee the program.

If apartments could compost enough to lower their garbage bill that would be good incentive for tenants to compost, said Maris.  She said some residents might be motivated to feel like part of the solution instead of part of the problem in wasting an organic resource such as compost.  Ultimately they have to decide if it is important to them, easy enough to do and might save them money, she said.

Pemble said individual tenants can get permission from their landlords to get an account and have the bill sent directly to the resident for $21.40 a month for weekly pick-ups for a bin good for 10 to 12 units to share.  Or residents can pay $11.70 a month for a bin good for sharing between five to six units and every-other-week pick-up.

He said the small complexes save enough money by not creating as much trash that they all benefit.  It’s a case by case basis whether it will work or not, he said.
Generally the landlord of a larger complex is interested in the economic side of the program and not necessarily the environmental aspect, he said.  If a landlord adds the composting service he or she will be wondering if there will be enough decrease in trash to drop the Dumpster down a size to save money. 

A commercial building such as an apartment must produce 25 to 33 percent less waste to drop down a Dumpster size depending on if it has a three or four yard Dumpster, Pemble said.

“To actually save money, a fair number of the building’s tenants must participate so the garbage Dumpster size or pick-up frequency can be reduced,” he said.

If a landlord orders compost service it would cost $8.66 a month for every-other-week pick up with a bin good for five to six units to share.  There are also bins good for sharing between 10 to 12 units for $17.32 a month with once a week pick-up. There are also individual bins for each apartment that can be purchased for a one-time fee of $8.75.

“With a larger project there are more hurdles to get something like this started,” he said.

Cook said she would be willing to pay up to $30 a month for compost pick up. Composting and recycling are important, she said, and she understands there are costs to both.

It would be worth paying for the service because there are a lot of things you can compost that end up getting thrown out, she said.  “I always feel bad throwing out items you can compost.”

To learn more about composting or for FoodPlus! composting program rates go to www.ssc-inc.com