Food-Scrap Composting Can Be Much Bigger. Here’s What Helps It Grow.
If you care about food-scrap composting, you've probably asked some version of the same question: Why isn’t this easier by now? Why isn’t it more common? Why does something that makes so much sense still feel like a special project instead of a normal part of everyday life?
We hear that question from public officials, institutions, customers, operators, farmers, advocates, and people who simply believe food scraps belong in productive use instead of a landfill.
And that frustration is worth listening to, because the opportunity is real.
Ohio is asking an important question
We are hearing active conversations across Ohio about raising landfill disposal fees — often called tip fees — and using additional proceeds to strengthen recycling, waste reduction, and organics infrastructure.
We think that is an important conversation. More resources can help food-scrap composting grow.
Grants can buy carts, trucks, processing equipment, and new facilities. Education can help people participate. Public investment can help a region build capability that didn't exist before.
But if the goal is to make food-scrap composting meaningfully more common, building new things is only part of the solution. We also have to make the whole system easier to use, operate, and scale.
Food-scrap composting is a chain, not a single project
At the simplest level, four things have to keep working together:
Participation — people and organizations have to separate food scraps cleanly and choose to use the system.
Collection — someone has to gather and move that material dependably.
Processing — a capable operation has to receive it and turn it into a useful product.
Markets — somebody has to want and use the finished compost.
If any one of those pieces is weak, growth slows. Add another truck without enough customers and the route may stay thin. Build processing capacity without dependable material, and the facility may sit underused. Create a great education campaign without a convenient service pathway, and interest may never become participation.
That does not mean the system is broken. It means the system is developing.
The good news: the next move does not have to solve everything
A house does not get built because somebody buys all the lumber at once. A good general contractor understands the finished goal, sequences the work, makes sure each trade is ready for the next one, and keeps the project moving without building tomorrow’s piece before today’s piece can support it.
Food-scrap composting needs the same kind of development discipline.
The useful question is not, “What is the one big solution?” It is: What is keeping this system from growing right now, and what is the smallest credible move that would make the next move easier?
Sometimes the answer is more participation. Sometimes it is a denser collection route, a better site, more processing capacity, a stronger operator, a dependable source of carbon-rich yard material, a finished-product market, a public policy change, or better economics.
The constraint changes as the system grows. That is normal.
What we want is a flywheel
The exciting version of this future is not one heroic compost facility. It is a regional flywheel.
More participation creates more dependable material. More dependable material helps collection routes become denser and more efficient. Better collection gives processors more confidence to operate and expand. Strong processing creates more finished product and better operating data. Stronger end markets make the whole system more durable. That durability makes it easier for the next person, institution, or community to participate.
Each improvement makes the next improvement easier.
That is how food-scrap composting starts to become normal.
Public support can help in more than one way
If new landfill-fee revenue becomes available, we should think broadly about what actually helps this flywheel turn.
Sometimes the highest-value use will be a grant for net-new carts, trucks, equipment, or facilities. Sometimes it may be helping an existing operation add customers, use available capacity more fully, reach a new geography, or achieve more real diversion. Sometimes it may be education, market development, site work, or another missing link.
Those are not competing ideas. They are different tools for different constraints.
The point is to reward and support the behavior and capability we actually want to grow — not only the purchase of the next piece of equipment.
This is the work GoZERO is trying to advance
GoZERO’s point of view is simple: food-scrap composting can become much more common, but it will happen faster when somebody takes responsibility for seeing the whole system, connecting the right partners, and helping each next investment follow real evidence and commitment. This is the work we pursue.
We call the role a Regional Organics Integrator. Sometimes that means planning. Sometimes development. Sometimes collection, processing, market work, partner enablement, or helping an existing operation become stronger. The role changes with the constraint.
If you have ever thought, “This should be further along by now,” you are exactly the kind of person we want to know.
We put together a short follow-on field guide for people who want to understand the anatomy of how food-scrap composting actually grows — and what public agencies, private operators, institutions, farms, and motivated individuals can do to help.