Upper Arlington staff told City Council on June 16 that the city’s curbside food-waste collection program has grown from 100 pilot households in 2022 to about 1,842 participating households and has diverted roughly 1.2 million pounds of organics since the program began.

“I am here from the public service department, and I'm here to talk to you tonight about our food waste collection program,” management assistant Katie Reese said as she opened the presentation and walked council through participation, tonnage and contract details.

Reese said the city started a drop-off program in 2019 that later expanded into a curbside pilot in February 2022 with USDA grant support. The curbside pilot initially used Go 0 Services and is now in the second year of a contract with Local Waste. Reese said the two-year contract is “just shy of $400,000” in total, the contracted rate is $10 per participating household per month, and the city spent about $180,000 in the first year of the contract. She told council the program currently averages roughly 6''.5 to 7 tons collected per week and set-out rates hover near 80 percent of participating households.

Staff laid out three options for paying for continued service if council elects to renew or extend the existing arrangement: 1) the city pays the full cost; 2) participants pay a portion (example given: $5/month, or roughly 50 percent of the cost per participating household); or 3) a citywide cost share that spreads the program cost across all households as a line item on the solid-waste bill. Reese recommended exercising Local Waste's remaining option years and capping the cost at about $300,000 per year while building the organics program into the scheduled citywide trash-and-recycling rebid expiring March 2028.

Council members asked about grant opportunities, collection frequency, potential impacts of charging participants and whether combining food and yard waste collection into one route would be feasible. Reese said USDA grants that helped launch the pilot are now harder to obtain and that most local grants prefer to fund new pilot starts rather than mature programs. On frequency, Reese said staff encourages weekly collection because leaving organics two weeks between collections tends to create odor issues and would likely reduce participation.

On combining routes, Reese said Central Ohio currently lacks the processing infrastructure to accept yard waste and food waste together at scale; the city and potential processors would need time to respond as participation grows. She said staff would continue outreach and study logistics but recommended moving forward now with option years to reach an estimated 2,500 participants by the end of the second extension year while seeking to include organics in the 2028 rebid for trash and recycling.

Councilmembers generally praised the program's diversion results and outreach, debated how much households should pay versus a citywide subsidy, and asked staff to return with budget figures showing what a citywide per-household charge would be if the cost were spread across all 13,000 households. Reese said a funding decision would need to be made by the fall budget cycle to preserve timing for the planned expansion and contract options.

Staff next steps include finalizing a funding recommendation in time for the fall budget process, continuing participant recruitment and working with Local Waste on pricing and option-year timing. Reese said the city aims to increase participation toward a realistic cap near 2,500 households over the next two years.