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When she\u2019s not manning the recycling center, Jessica Caban is in frequent talks with city leaders about the future of New Bedford\u2019s waste. Credit: Brooke Kushwaha \/ The New Bedford Light<\/p>\nMultiple days a week at the New Bedford Waste and Recycling Center on Shawmut Avenue, New Bedford recycling coordinator Jessica Caban staffs the three banana-yellow bins labeled \u201cFood Waste.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a few days\u2019 time, the bins will be filled to the brim with vegetable peels, apple cores, onion skins, chicken bones and the like before being carted off to the nearest composting facility or anaerobic digester, Caban said. A resident pulls up to the station with his own bucket of scraps and hands Caban his license.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to show me your ID,\u201d Caban assured him. \u201cI\u2019ve seen you around before.\u201d<\/p>\n
In November, the city launched a partnership with Providence-based ReMix Organics to allow residents to drop off their food scraps in bins during recycling center hours. The program is currently a gentle push to reduce and repurpose food waste that would otherwise go to a landfill or incinerator \u2014 but it could soon turn into a shove.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By 2030, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is expected to ban all food scraps in municipal trash. New Bedford officials say the city \u2014 and most communities in the state \u2014 aren\u2019t ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s realistic,\u201d Caban said. \u201cPersonally, I think they\u2019re going to have to push it back because the infrastructure isn\u2019t there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly a quarter of Massachusetts household trash is food waste. In a state that is already increasingly exporting its trash as landfill space tightens, 160 communities have already adopted some form of food waste collection program to increase landfill capacity and lower hauling fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fourteen communities, including Boston, Cambridge, and Medford, have rolled out municipal curbside compost programs to help make composting as easy as taking out the trash. Other communities like Newton and Dartmouth have launched partnerships with private companies offering curbside service to encourage residents to adopt the practice.<\/p>\n
Lower-income cities like New Bedford, however, have struggled to set up either taxpayer-funded or private curbside composting programs \u2014 leaving money and scraps on the table. According to Caban, the city can\u2019t afford to fund a program, residents can\u2019t or won\u2019t pay for a private service, and communities in similar positions must all compete for the same limited pot of grant money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re stuck between a rock and a hard place,\u201d Caban said.<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s not manning the recycling center, Jessica Caban is in frequent talks with city leaders about the future of New Bedford\u2019s waste. Credit: Brooke Kushwaha \/ The New Bedford Light<\/p>\n
The future is food waste<\/p>\n
In 2023, Massachusetts communities reportedly diverted over 20,000 tons of food scraps from landfills or incinerators through food waste collection programs, not counting households with their own backyard compost. By 2030, MassDEP aims to divert 780,000 tons of household food waste<\/a> from the regular waste stream annually.<\/p>\n The ambitious goal comes as more and more Massachusetts cities have to export their waste out of state as landfill space tightens, driving up hauling costs. The Crapo Hill Landfill, which serves both Dartmouth and New Bedford, has an estimated life span of just 13 more years, after which point the region will have to pay more to export its trash elsewhere.<\/p>\n Kirstie Pecci, the CEO and president of Just Zero, an environmental advocacy group that promotes zero-waste policies, said the new regulation is decades in the making. Since 2014, MassDEP has regulated the amount of food waste commercial operators can throw in the trash<\/a>, although this would be the first limit on residential food waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe best way to solve a landfill problem is to put as little in the landfill as possible,\u201d Pecci said. \u201cAnd right now, in every state in the country, somewhere between 25 to 33% of what goes into the landfill by weight is food and yard waste.\u201d<\/p>\n New Bedford has offered a food waste drop-off program at the recycling center on Shawmut Avenue since 2022. In that time, the amount of food waste the center receives has roughly doubled\u2014from 50 to over 100 gallons collected per week, Caban said. In 2025, the recycling center collected 20,616 pounds of food scraps and sold 116 backyard compost bins to residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n New Bedford Public Schools has also composted its food waste since 2021, diverting 67 tons of scraps in 2025.<\/p>\n But even with more robust participation, Massachusetts communities will need to do much more to comply with MassDEP\u2019s upcoming regulations. Anthony Novelli, the executive director of the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District, which operates the Crapo Hill Landfill, said the district is exploring the landfill\u2019s long-term operations, including a possible on-site composting facility, although nothing is certain yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they were to ban all municipal food waste across the state, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough composting or facilities in the state to handle that much food waste at this point,\u201d Novelli said.<\/p>\n Learn more<\/p>\n New Bedford Food Waste Drop-off Program<\/p>\n Where: New Bedford Recycling Center, 1103 Shawmut Ave.<\/p>\n When: Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday: 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.<\/p>\n For that reason, Novelli said much of the district\u2019s outreach efforts revolve around reducing food waste in the first place by encouraging reuse and responsible shopping. On a broader scale, organizations like Just Zero and the Marion Institute<\/a>, a local nonprofit, also work to prevent food waste through practices like gleaning (combing local farms for spare crops) and coordinating food donations from farms and restaurants.<\/p>\n But one day soon composting will have to become trash day de rigueur, Pecci said, and it\u2019s up to each community to help residents get there.<\/p>\n \u201cChange takes time, it\u2019s habits, it\u2019s all those pieces,\u201d Pecci said. \u201cEventually, it\u2019ll become second nature to people that \u2018Of course, you don\u2019t put your food in the trash. Who would do that? That\u2019s crazy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking outside the bin<\/p>\n Of the 160 Massachusetts communities with a food waste collection program, 82 have a drop-off program like New Bedford\u2019s. A select few have started to collect food scraps curbside with their regular trash pickup.<\/p>\n In 2018, the City of Cambridge launched its citywide municipal composting program with roughly half of the city\u2019s eligible households. Since then, the program has grown from 25,000 to nearly 40,000 households served \u2014 roughly 80% participation.<\/p>\n Mike Orr, the recycling director at the Cambridge Department of Public Works, said the program \u2014 one of the first of its kind on the East Coast \u2014 was the product of a dedicated group of activists who helped usher the program from a fledgling drop-off program to the one known today.<\/p>\n A MassDEP grant helped Cambridge launch the program, which was made cheaper because Cambridge already hauled its own waste instead of using an outside trash service. In just a few years, the city has already reaped some financial benefits, Orr said. While the cost of trash disposal has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, the cost of compost continues to decrease.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re moving in different directions, so every time that we can separate food out of the trash is a cost savings to the city,\u201d Orr said.\u00a0<\/p>\n One unforeseen benefit, Orr added, is the program\u2019s effectiveness in rodent mitigation. In 2022, the City of Cambridge audited its trash bins to find that 45% had holes from rodents. The city then switched out the bins, swapping half with lidded food waste barrels. Two years later, just 1.5% of food waste barrels had holes due to rodents, compared to 10% of trash bins.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have a mouse infestation in your home, the first thing the exterminator says is to put your bags of rice and your grains in a sealed container so that they can\u2019t access it,\u201d Orr said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same thing for your food waste outside. If you put your food in a sealed container, the mice and the rats are not going to get to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Boston started up its own free curbside program in 2022, although it initially limited enrollment to just 10,000 households and has yet to expand to a majority of the city. Part of that slow-roll is because Boston contracts with Waste Management, which does not have its own compost facility.<\/p>\n Recovering from sticker shock, some communities have opted for partnerships with private composting companies like Black Earth Compost to bring curbside service to residents. Using state grant funding, Newton has offered one such service to residents since 2019, growing from 500 to about 3,200 households.<\/p>\n Waneta Trabert, the director of Newton\u2019s Sustainable Materials Management Division, said the program has allowed the city to offer discounted compost service to residents without breaking the bank.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say that [Cambridge] is pretty committed to sustainability goals, and they have the means to be able to put a lot of investment there,\u201d Trabert said. \u201cI would say many communities, including Newton, do not have that degree of flexibility with the general fund.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting over the \u2018yuck factor\u2019<\/p>\n Not everyone has the stomach for compost. These programs are expensive, Trabert said, even though they may reap savings in the long term.<\/p>\n Even as city-run compost programs in Cambridge and Boston take off, the number of residents participating in these programs remains relatively low. Despite delivering free compost buckets to every doorstep, the City of Cambridge is still missing roughly 20 percent of eligible households. Boston\u2019s program currently serves just 27,000 of the city\u2019s 295,000 households, and is closed to residents in buildings with seven or more units.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Newton, the city\u2019s partnership with Black Earth Compost showed early promise, but for the past two years has seen membership plateau.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is kind of this point at which most of all the people who are into it and are really enthusiastic about it have already adopted it, and then it becomes a much harder request of people who are on the fence or are curious about it, but have some apprehension,\u201d Trabert said.<\/p>\n In Cambridge, Orr said outreach can be difficult with a young adult population constantly moving around, and even with consistent outreach, some people will always be late adopters. Compost bags and bucket liners can also be pricey, which is why the city is looking into ways to reduce those ongoing costs for residents already participating in the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n States like California have eliminated holdovers by charging more for trash service than compost service, but this approach may have limited success in Massachusetts. In November, Medford announced the city\u2019s new pay-as-you-throw program, which would charge residents based on the amount of trash they produce. Among the changes effective July 2027, the city would also decrease trash service to biweekly while making curbside compost service weekly.<\/p>\n Although these changes had been years in the making and years from taking effect, the backlash from residents received national attention.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Years earlier, Fall River reversed its pay-as-you-throw program<\/a> due to political unpopularity.<\/p>\n Caban sees the situation in Medford as a cautionary tale, and a lesson in fostering community buy-in before introducing major changes.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why we do everything that we\u2019re doing \u2014 because we don\u2019t want that to happen here,\u201d Caban said.<\/p>\n Leaving it all on the table<\/p>\n Curbside compost could soon become a reality for New Bedford residents \u2014 but only for those willing to pay for it.<\/p>\n Black Earth Compost is a private composting service offering weekly or biweekly curbside food waste pickup to Massachusetts residents, provided that enough households sign up for the service within a certain square mile radius. Although Black Earth currently serves residents in both Dartmouth and Fairhaven, the company has struggled to gain enough interest in New Bedford, municipal coordinator Jon Laurie said. Just 65 out of 38,000 eligible households so far have preregistered for compost service, most of them in the city\u2019s South End.<\/p>\n Initially, the company offered to begin service in New Bedford once it received 100 sign-ups, but it now has decided to try to move forward with compost service in the South End.<\/p>\n Last week, Black Earth sent out a survey to its pre-registered households in New Bedford to make sure they would still like to sign up, Laurie said. If just 25 households respond \u201cyes,\u201d the company will begin service as soon as next month.<\/p>\n Laurie still hopes to hit that 100-household benchmark before any buckets hit the curb. The more households that participate, he added, the cheaper Black Earth\u2019s service becomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGetting a program started is sometimes the best advertising we can do,\u201d Laurie said. \u201cOnce the neighborhood is full of bins, people start getting curious on what that is, and if they can participate.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents can still drop off their food scraps at the recycling center free of charge, but Caban said one of the largest barriers to composting besides cost is just asking residents to change their habits.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes time and it takes a mindset shift, but it\u2019s not too hard to stop by the recycling center when you go out to get your groceries,\u201d Caban said.<\/p>\n After seeing the number of residents who turned out to oppose a waste transfer station<\/a> last summer, Pecci is hopeful that local activists will turn their attention to the next big shift in New Bedford trash.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes people are drawn to the fight against something and they don\u2019t know what to fight for,\u201d Pecci said. \u201cI would say, most definitely, locally, New Bedford residents should fight for a good composting program.\u201d<\/p>\n Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 20, 2026January 20, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 18, 2026January 18, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_0777.jpeg\")
The Crapo Hill Landfill currently only has the capacity to compost leaf and yard waste. Credit: Brooke Kushwaha \/ The New Bedford Light<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/shorter-blue-dash.png\")
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\nA majority of the households who preregistered for Black Earth Compost service lie in the city\u2019s South End. Credit: Black Earth Compost<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_0771-edited-scaled.jpeg\")
New Bedford residents can bring compostable bags full of food scraps to the recycling center during regular hours. Credit: Brooke Kushwaha \/ The New Bedford Light<\/p>\n
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