When participation is not working as expected, ask yourselves, 鈥淲hat is making participation harder than it needs to be?鈥� Sometimes the answer is not found at the curb or at the composting facility, but in the overlooked space between them.
By Michelle Horneff-Cohen
Residential organics programs are often discussed in terms of two endpoints: what residents are asked to separate at home and what happens after material enters the collection and processing system.
Between those endpoints is a part of the process that deserves more attention. Food scraps have to move from the kitchen to somewhere else.
That may sound obvious, but the steps involved in that movement can determine whether a resident participates consistently, participates occasionally, or does not participate at all.
For more than 25 years, I worked in residential property management, where I saw firsthand how seemingly small operational details influence resident behavior. That experience continues to shape the way I look at organics programs today.
Providing collection infrastructure is essential. However, providing a cart, shared bin, or community drop-off location does not by itself address what happens before a resident reaches it. That is the missing middle.
Collection Begins Inside the 豆包成人版
From an operational standpoint, collection may begin when material is placed in a cart or picked up by a hauler. From a resident鈥檚 perspective, it begins much earlier. A meal is prepared. Food scraps are generated. The resident has to decide where those scraps go inside the home, how long they will remain there, and eventually how they will be transported to the appropriate collection point.
For a single-family household with curbside service, that journey may be relatively short. For someone living in a multifamily property, it can involve moving food scraps from an apartment to a shared waste room, chute area, garage, courtyard, or other central collection location.
For someone participating through a community drop-off program, the journey may extend beyond the property altogether. These are different collection models, but they share an important requirement: the resident must successfully complete the in-home portion before the rest of the system can work.
Images courtesy of Clean Composting Company.
Multifamily Adds Operational Complexity
Multifamily housing makes this particularly important. Apartments may have limited kitchen and storage space. Residents share collection infrastructure. The distance between a unit and the organics bin may be much greater than it is in a single-family home. Buildings also experience resident turnover, which creates an ongoing need for clear communication.
In property management, one lesson becomes apparent very quickly: making something available does not necessarily make it easy to use. An organics cart on the property provides access, but it does not answer several practical questions residents still face:
鈥� Where should food scraps be kept inside the apartment?
鈥� How should they be transported through the building?
鈥� What should residents do if they are unsure whether an item is accepted?
鈥� Are instructions easy to find for someone who has just moved in?
These may appear to be minor implementation details. From the resident鈥檚 perspective, however, they are the program.
Access and Usability Are Not the Same Thing
This distinction between access and usability deserves greater attention in residential organics planning. A program can have excellent downstream infrastructure and still create unnecessary difficulty at the household level.
Residents may understand that food scraps belong in the organics stream but still encounter friction around storage, odor, mess, cleaning, transport, or uncertainty about accepted materials. That does not mean education is unimportant. Clear education is essential.
However, education cannot solve every usability problem. If participation requires too many steps, repeated cleaning, confusing material decisions, or an inconvenient trip to the collection point, another flyer may not address the underlying issue.
Program design should therefore look not only at whether residents have access to collection, but also at how they are expected to use that access in everyday life.
Community Drop-Off Makes the Transport Question Clearer
Community drop-off programs make this issue particularly visible because the resident takes on more responsibility for transporting material. Instead of moving food scraps from the kitchen to a nearby cart, the resident may need to carry them to another location or transport them in a vehicle. This changes the practical requirements of participation:
鈥� How will food scraps be contained during that trip?
鈥� How long might residents store them before going to the drop-off location?
鈥� Is the chosen collection method practical for transport?
鈥� What instructions are residents given about what can be left at the site?
The drop-off location itself is only one part of that system. The journey required to reach it should also be considered when designing for participation.
Material Acceptance Must Remain Local
The growing range of products marketed for organics collection creates another challenge: residents cannot assume that every item labeled 鈥渃ompostable鈥� is accepted by every program. Collection rules and processing capabilities differ. That makes local guidance essential.
Whether residents use a bag, container, or another method for collecting food scraps, programs should communicate clearly what is accepted and what is not. The simpler and more specific those instructions are, the less residents have to interpret on their own.
This matters not only for participation but also for contamination prevention. A resident can place an unwanted material in the organics stream while genuinely believing they are following the rules. The mistake may begin in the kitchen, but its consequences continue downstream. Clear upstream decisions support a cleaner collection stream.
Design Around the Resident Journey
When evaluating a residential organics program, municipalities, property managers, haulers, and other stakeholders may benefit from following the food scrap through the entire journey rather than evaluating each component separately.
A few practical questions can reveal where unnecessary friction exists:
鈥� What happens to food scraps immediately after they are generated?
鈥� Where are they stored inside the home?
鈥� How does the resident move them to the collection point?
鈥� How far does the resident have to travel?
鈥� Are accepted materials clearly explained?
鈥� What happens when a new resident enters the program?
鈥� Does the system require residents to make unnecessary decisions or complete avoidable steps?
The answers will vary by community. That is exactly why there is no single residential collection strategy that fits every setting. The goal should not be to force every household into one method. It should be to understand how the chosen collection model works from the resident鈥檚 point of view.
Design for Ordinary Days
One of the easiest mistakes to make in program design is imagining the ideal participant. The ideal resident reads every instruction, remembers every rule, has enough kitchen space, never forgets collection day, and is consistently motivated. Real residents are also working, raising families, carrying groceries, cleaning kitchens, moving into new buildings, and managing countless other responsibilities.
A collection system has to function within that reality. If a program depends on residents being perfectly informed and perfectly consistent, the system becomes fragile. The more intuitive the process is, the less effort residents have to spend figuring out what to do next. That does not remove personal responsibility. It creates the conditions that make responsible behavior easier to repeat.
Look Beyond the Collection Point
The organics industry has made enormous investments in collection and processing infrastructure. As programs mature, there is an opportunity to look more closely at the smaller steps connecting residents to that infrastructure:
鈥� The kitchen container
鈥� Temporary storage
鈥� The walk from an apartment to a shared bin
鈥� The trip to a community drop-off location
鈥� The instructions attached to the program
None of these elements is as visible as a collection truck or processing facility, but they influence whether food scraps ever reach those systems. When participation is not working as expected, the first question should not always be, 鈥淗ow do we convince residents to care more?鈥�
A more useful question may be: What is making participation harder than it needs to be? Sometimes the answer is found not at the curb or at the composting facility, but in the overlooked space between them. | WA
Michelle Horneff-Cohen is the Founder of Clean Composting Company and Creator of The Compost Collector庐. With a passion for sustainable living and more than 25 years of experience in residential property management, Michelle saw, first-hand, the need to tackle inefficiencies in organic waste management. Driven by her vision for a cleaner, greener future, she leads the company in developing innovative, sustainable solutions that empower communities to compost with ease and confidence. Michelle can be reached at (415) 269-8803 or e-mail聽[email protected]. To order The Compost Collector庐, visit聽m.