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The question is not whether a community can afford to launch a curbside organics program, but rather whether the program is designed effectively and optimally integrated into the solid waste management system.
By Eugenia Manwelyan

The conversation about curbside food waste collection programs often stalls at the same place: cost. Local officials, solid waste managers, and elected leaders hear “organics program” and immediately picture a new line item on an already-stretched budget, a significant increase to the charge on the customer bill, and a public communications headache to match. That perception is understandable, but it is increasingly out of step with what the data shows.

According to the 2023 BioCycle Nationwide Access Survey, approximately 400 residential food waste collection programs are currently operating across the U.S., serving an estimated 15 million households. These programs span rural towns, first-ring suburbs, and large urban centers. What the best of them share is not a unique geography or an unusually generous budget. What they share is deliberate program design, and that design difference is what separates an affordable organics program from a costly one.

A comprehensive cost analysis of curbside organics collection programs across 10 communities——ranging from a small Minnesota town to some of the largest cities in the country—found a consistent pattern: a well-planned, efficiently operated solid waste program that collects all three streams (garbage, recycling, and organics) can cost residents roughly the same as a comparable program that collects only two (garbage and recycling). The gap between two and three stream collection is smaller than most people expect, and in some communities, it has been closed entirely.

The Numbers Tell the Story
The sticker-shock assumption tends to treat organics as an add-on—a new service layered on top of an unchanged program. That framing is where the math goes wrong. When communities optimize their full solid waste program at the point of adding organics collection, rather than simply tacking on a new service, they can create efficiencies across all three streams that offset a significant share of the new cost. Reducing trash collection from weekly to every-other-week service, for example, becomes more feasible when food scraps are no longer going into the garbage bin, since the remaining trash is drier, lower-volume, and less odorous. The cost savings from that single frequency adjustment can partially or fully absorb the cost of weekly organics collection.

The peer data bears this out. Austin, TX, where residents receive curbside garbage, recycling, and organics collection as a bundled standard service, charges just over $26 per month under its pay-as-you-throw model. Raleigh, NC, which provides garbage and recycling collection only, charges residents nearly $22 per month. This small cost differentiation, and cost efficiencies overall, are characteristic of programs with efficient route design, high participation, and favorable processing relationships. While local tipping fees, hauler market conditions, processing infrastructure, and population density all shape the final cost of adding organics, the assumption of a large, automatic rate increase when organics collection is added is not supported by the evidence.

The Levers That Drive Affordability
Several high-impact factors determine whether an organics program lands close to a two-stream cost or significantly above it. Local governments have meaningful control over most of them.

Collection Frequency Adjustments
Shifting trash and/or recycling service from weekly to every-other-week collection when organics are diverted is one of the single highest-impact cost offsets available. The cost savings from reduced collection frequency can be applied directly to the new organics service, producing a program launch that is cost-neutral on the collection side.

Contract Negotiations
Municipalities with an existing solid waste hauling contract hold a strategic asset when they approach program expansion. A contract amendment negotiated at renewal, particularly one that bundles organics into an extended term, may allow a community to add a service without triggering a standalone competitive bid and without a corresponding rate increase. The hauler retains an extended relationship, while the municipality secures favorable pricing on the new service stream.

Route Optimization
Redesigning collection geographies at the time of program launch, to account for the new service and potentially the adjusted frequency on trash or recycling routes, can reduce per-stop costs across all three streams. This step is frequently skipped in programs that treat organics as an add-on rather than an occasion for whole-program evaluation.

High Participation
The relationship between participation and cost is direct: fixed program costs such as carts, vehicles, billing infrastructure, and contract overhead are spread across every enrolled household. A standard or mandatory participation model, where all eligible households are enrolled by default, produces the economies of scale that make per-unit costs competitive with two-stream programs. Opt-in models, where only a self-selected minority participates, drive up per-unit costs because the fixed cost base is spread across far fewer households.

Cost of Service Transparency
Periodic cost-of-service reviews are essential to keeping a program financially sound over time. They surface cost overruns, identify contractor performance issues, and provide the data needed to justify rate adjustments before a structural deficit develops.

A Framework for Getting Started
Communities interested in launching or expanding a residential organics program should approach the work in three phases.

Phase 1: Evaluate the Current Solid 91TV Program
Before designing an organics program, a community should audit what it already has. This means reviewing the existing hauling contract, including remaining term, amendment provisions, and renewal timeline, to understand the window for renegotiation. It means assessing billing infrastructure and identifying whether a dedicated solid waste management fee exists or needs to be established. And it means quantifying the efficiency savings available across garbage and recycling routes that can offset the cost of adding a new service. Communities that fund solid waste through the general fund should also evaluate whether a dedicated revenue stream would provide a more stable and flexible foundation for program growth.

Phase 2: Design and Run a Pilot
A well-structured pilot allows a community to test collection logistics, evaluate hauler and processor relationships, establish baseline metrics, and build public support before committing to full-scale rollout. Pilot geography should reflect the broader community, not just the neighborhoods most likely to succeed, so that the data produced is actually predictive of citywide performance. Key metrics to track include set-out rate, contamination rate, tons collected, and cost per ton. Public education should be built into the pilot budget from the start; a minimum of $3 per household per year is a useful planning benchmark. Grant funding from state environmental agencies, the EPA, and private foundations has supported pilots in communities across the country and can reduce General Fund exposure during the planning phase.

Phase 3: Roll Out at Full Scale with the Participation Model Locked In
The single most consequential design decision at this stage is the participation model. Standard and mandatory models consistently outperform opt-in models on both participation rate and per-unit cost efficiency. Communities that have completed a successful pilot and secured a processing relationship are well positioned to launch with a standard or mandatory model. Full-scale rollout should be accompanied by a multi-year financial monitoring plan that tracks cost per ton, cost per household, participation rate, and contamination rate against pilot benchmarks, providing the foundation for ongoing contract management, rate adjustments, and transparent public reporting.

The Cost of Doing Nothing Is Rising
One figure that rarely enters the affordability conversation is the cost of not acting. The national average landfill tipping fee reached $62.28 per ton in 2024, a 10 percent increase from the year before and nearly 30 percent higher in inflation-adjusted terms than it was in 2016. Regional variation is wide, with the Northeast averaging over $80 per ton, and upward pressure is not expected to ease as existing landfill capacity tightens and new siting faces increasing community resistance.

Communities that defer organics collection are not avoiding cost. They are simply paying it in a different form: higher disposal fees on an increasing fraction of their waste stream, reduced landfill life, and foregone diversion benefits that compound over time. Hamilton, MA, which has operated a mandatory curbside organics program since 2012, saved more than $40,000 in a single year through reduced solid waste tonnage fees alone once food scraps were removed from the trash stream.

The question is not whether a community can afford to launch a curbside organics program. For most communities, the more accurate question is whether the program is designed well enough to make the cost difference small. The evidence from across the country says it can be. | WA

Boise: A Blueprint for Cost-Neutral Program Launch

No community illustrates the power of contract-based program design more clearly than Boise, ID. Boise delivers all three residential waste streams through an exclusive franchise arrangement with a single private hauler. When the city decided to add organics collection, it did not issue a new procurement, run a standalone pilot, or impose a new fee on residents. Instead, it negotiated organics collection into its existing franchise relationship as an incremental expansion of scope.

That negotiating position was stronger than it might appear. Boise already controlled an exclusive franchise agreement, so the hauler had every incentive to accommodate the expansion rather than risk losing a valuable contract. The city set the reimbursement rate to the hauler on its own terms and absorbed the new service into the existing rate structure. The result: residents in Boise pay for food waste collection as part of their standard monthly solid waste fee, with no separate organics charge and no increase to their bill.

Boise reinforced the program’s reach through a deliberate rate design choice. Rather than making organics collection voluntary, the city made it the default and charged a premium to customers who opted out. This means that for Boise residents, opting out of composting and recycling service costs more than keeping it. This behavioral economics approach produces near-mandatory food waste cart set-out rates without requiring a formal ordinance mandate, which means more households enrolled, fixed costs spread across a larger base, and per-unit costs that remain competitive over time.

A city-owned composting facility gives Boise another structural advantage. By internalizing processing costs within its enterprise fund, the city avoids market-rate tipping fees and retains control over compost quality and end-market relationships. The city distributes finished compost back to residents free of charge, making the program’s value tangible and visible. Boise’s experience demonstrates that the combination of an existing exclusive franchise relationship, negotiated program expansion, default enrollment, and a city-owned processing facility can produce an organics program that residents experience as simply part of what they already pay.

Eugenia Manwelyan is a Manager at Raftelis, where she helps local governments implement environmental sustainability, resilience, and climate action initiatives. With more than five years of experience in the public and nonprofit sectors, Eugenia specializes in funding strategies, program implementation, and financial analysis with a focus on food waste reduction and circular economy solutions. To explore how your community could design an affordable curbside organics program, contact Eugenia at [email protected].