Curbside compost service to take effect this spring in St. Charles

A curbside composting program will be rolled out this spring in St. Charles, offering residents a more environmentally friendly option for disposing of organic materials.

Starting in April, various food scraps, paper products, coffee grounds and other qualifying items can be added to yard waste bags, which will then be collected by waste haulers and taken to a composting facility, said Chris Adesso, assistant public works director.

The pickup service is included in the city's existing residential refuse contract with Lakeshore Recycling Systems but has not yet been activated, he said.

The program will be conducted as a "ride-along" to seasonal yard waste collection services, Adesso said, meaning there's no extra cost to participate. The compostable products can be mixed in with grass clippings, leaves and other similar materials, for which residents already pay a sticker-based service or a subscription cart.

Acting as a committee Monday, aldermen expressed their support for the additional curbside service, which aims to keep food scraps and other organic products out of the landfills.

"Kudos that we're finally going to get this going," Alderman Maureen Lewis said. "We've talked about this for a while, and I'm very excited."

The composting program was included in the city's requests during negotiations for a new refuse contract in 2018, Adesso said. A five-year deal with Lakeshore took effect that summer, though the compost component remained inactive as the city transitioned to its new vendor.

St. Charles officials have since received several inquiries about a pickup program for organic materials, spurring discussion among the city's advisory natural resources commission.

"A lot of the industry is going in that direction," Adesso said. "It seemed like a natural progression, as we move into the next season when it'd be available, to fire things up."

Several other communities in the suburbs have implemented compost collection services, including Batavia and Geneva, said Heather Goudreau, an environmental educator and a member of the national resources commission.

The advisory panel has volunteered to work with city staff members, as well as Lakeshore representatives, to launch an educational campaign informing residents of the service.

Those efforts will include explaining how the program works, as well as the types of products that can be composted. Those include breads, grains, pasta, cereal, coffee grounds and filters, produce, eggshells, tea bags and paper napkins.

Among the items that will be excluded are meat, seafood, bones, shells, plastic, Styrofoam, oil and liquids.

The materials will be sorted at the composting facility, and any inadvertently placed garbage will be sent to a landfill.

"I believe that people who want to do the right thing by composting will pay attention to the details on how to do it properly," Goudreau said. "I'm grateful that St. Charles is moving forward."