Dear Washingtonians,

You may or may not know that today is National Learn About Composting Day. To celebrate, I joined the Department of Public Works and community members at the Anacostia Library, one of our LEED Gold libraries, to celebrate the people and teams that have helped make our District composting programs such a success.   

We officially launched our first citywide composting programs in 2017. We started with drop-off sites at farmers markets. Then, we launched the residential composting pilot. It quickly became one of our most popular government programs, so we expanded from 9,000 households to 12,000 households. Then, we put public bins around the city where residents can drop off their composting. And today, we announced that starting this summer, DPW will be rolling out 20 additional food waste smart bins citywide.

And what’s most important is that the composting programs are working: Since 2017, our community has composted 11 million pounds of food waste. Since just last year, the smart bins have collected more than 800,000 pounds of food waste, and we are on track to collect a million pounds by this summer. All of this composting has the same environmental impact as taking roughly 500 gas-powered vehicles off the road or planting approximately 35,000 trees.

If you aren’t familiar with composting, you should know this: it’s easy! I keep a composting bucket on my countertop with a compostable bag in it, and I put my food scraps in it as I go. If you are part of the residential composting program, DPW picks up your food waste once a week. If not, it’s still easy – you just take your food waste to one of the 24-hour smart bins or to a weekend farmers market drop-off site.

If that sounds interesting to you, check out this interactive map of all smart bins and drop-off sites.