Cutting City Disposal Costs with Local Food Scrap Recyclers
This case study was originally published in Keep Compost Local, a report offering survey data, case studies, and policy recommendations to equip governments to collaborate with local composters and foster community prosperity.
Municipality and Interviewee: City of Providence, Kevin Proft, Deputy Director of Sustainability
Community Composters: Harvest Cycle/Groundwork RI (Ella Kilpatrick Kotner, Director of Compost Programs) and The Community Compost Depot (Michael Bradlee, Executive Director)
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)
The City of Providence received two federal grants to support the creation of infrastructure for food scraps collection and composting. In both cases, the City subcontracted with existing food scraps service providers in Providence, including Harvest Cycle (an initiative of Groundwork RI) and The Community Compost Depot. Other subcontractors include the Center for EcoTechnology (CET) to provide technical assistance for food scraps diversion to businesses and institutions in the city, and Remix Organics, to expand local capacity for commercial food scraps hauling.
The first grant, awarded in 2023, is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling (SWIFR) grant for $3.3 million for three years (2024-2027) to support infrastructure expansions for food scraps diversion and to expand and enhance the City of Providence’s municipal recycling collection. The second grant is a $285,850 (including local cash match) U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Composting and Food Waste Reduction (CFWR) grant awarded to the City in September 2024 to six service providers to increase food scraps diversion from residents, schools, and businesses. Harvest Cycle, The Community Compost Depot, and CET are among the six service providers. Table 1 shows the awards to the participants in both grants.
Table 1. EPA and USDA grant awards in City of Providence
¹ Expand food scraps diversion programs
² Provide compost bins, supplies, and mentorship to community
Municipal Motivation
An underlying motivation for the City of Providence to expand food scraps diversion is the cost of trash disposal when it exceeds the yearly cap established by the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, which owns and operates the state’s only landfill. For example, according to a May 29, 2024 article in the Providence Eye, “Providence’s 2023 solid waste cap was 62,496 tons. Under the cap, the City pays $58.50 per ton to dispose of its waste. Once the City reaches its cap, the disposal rate increases to $115 per ton. In 2023, Providence surpassed the cap by 11,151 tons. Then, there’s the $250 fee for each contaminated recycling load that’s rejected at the MRF [materials recovery facility], which then goes to the landfill and adds to the City’s total waste tally. All in, that’s around $4,938,381 in disposal fees [in 2023].”
Kevin Proft, the City’s Deputy Sustainability Director, explains that “the best way to get under the cap is to recycle more — and have a cleaner recycling stream since recyclables don’t count against the cap. We tend to hit the cap three months before the end of the year. Even reducing that by one month would yield a huge savings. Another way the City would see savings would be to reduce food waste in [the] trash stream.” For its SWIFR and CFWR grant applications, the City’s approach was to tap into and bolster existing services that businesses and nonprofits offer in Providence already. “Aside from seasonal yard waste collection, the only food scraps diversion offering the City has is discounted backyard composting bins,” he adds. “But in terms of increasing the number of small food scraps composting sites and drop-off locations, we’re supporting Groundwork RI and The Community Compost Depot.”
Harvest Cycle has been operating since 2018. It uses bicycles to collect food scraps from residences and small businesses in Providence and composts the scraps at a community garden as well as several other smaller sites, including a library. The main composting site, which is exempt from Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) permitting, is restricted to processing under 25 cubic yards of material at one time and limiting food scraps accepted to vegetative only. Revenues to support Harvest Cycle’s day-to-day operations come from food scrap collection fees. Harvest Cycle also manages 15 out of the 18 drop-off sites currently operating in the city. It has about 850 subscribers in total, split fairly evenly between pick up and drop off. “We collect about 12 to 13 tons per month of food scraps, and only have capacity to process about 10 to 15% of that,” explains Ella Kilpatrick Kotner. “Most of it is taken by ReMix to a food-waste-only anaerobic digester (Rhode Island Bioenergy Facility, LLC) in Johnston. Funds awarded to us by the City from the SWIFR grant are for Groundwork RI’s new composting facility, the West End Compost Hub. They will be used mostly for site work, utilities, and building foundations.”
The new composting site is on a brownfield, which has required more extensive remediation than originally anticipated. Before the final capping of the site, all utilities and stormwater collection infrastructure must be installed. Groundwork RI was anticipating additional funds for the composting site from an $18 million EPA Community Change Grant awarded to the Rhode Island Food Policy Council in 2024. In May 2025, the EPA informed the Council that its grant had been terminated. “We were relying on those funds to complete construction of the facility and install a custom-built Earth Flow in-vessel system from Green Mountain Technologies,” adds Kilpatrick Kotner. “The mixing system, which includes an auger, mounting bar, and positive aeration blowers, has been purchased and we are building the concrete stem walls that are about 4 feet high that the auger track will sit on top of. The upper part of the structure will be like a greenhouse with aluminum trusses and polycarbonate siding. There will be roll-up doors on the ends, so it will be fully enclosed. Anticipated capacity is for four to six tons per week of food scraps, which required us to get a medium-scale leaf, yard and/or putrescible waste composting operations permit from RIDEM.”
Harvest Cycle is using the USDA CFWR grant funds to open six new food scraps drop-off sites and rebuild some of the 3-bin composting systems currently in use. The Community Compost Depot is also using the USDA grant funds it received for distributed food scraps drop-off and composting. “We have been assisting with identifying sites for the dropoff locations,” says Proft. “Under this grant, it may be the first time that municipal properties — in this case, two City recreation centers — will be used.”
Drop-off site at the Igliozzi Recreation Center. Credit: Groundwork RI
Harvest Cycle processing staff Tetee sifting compost. Credit: Groundwork RI
Groundwork RI youth staff processing compost at the Ring Street Garden. Credit: Groundwork RI
Composting Activity
Harvest Cycle’s three small composting operations are paired with drop-off sites, so that the food scraps collected at each can be processed on site. Two of the operations are at community gardens; one is at a library, which is not on municipal property. A mixture of Harvest Cycle staff, Groundwork RI youth staff, and volunteers provides the processing labor at these sites. The largest of the three sites has eight 1.5-cubic-yard bins to process the food scraps, which are mixed with wood chips, leaves, and yard trimmings. USDA CFWR grant funds were used to rebuild the bins at that site. The smaller sites have 3-bin systems; each bin has 1.5 cubic yards of capacity.
The Community Compost Depot uses insulated 90-gallon aerated bins to compost food scraps it receives via its drop-off sites. The composting area is behind a florist in a greenhouse formerly used to grow plants. It composts about 100 cubic yards per year and is exempt from RIDEM permitting.
Outreach and Education
The City of Providence awarded $84,540 of the USDA CFWR grant funds to Zero Waste Providence (ZWP) to educate and engage the community on the benefits of composting and waste reduction. ZWP focuses on creating opportunities for “members of the Providence community to participate in more sustainable lifestyles and economies,” states its website. For the USDA grant, it is conducting outreach at community events, farmers markets, local libraries, and recreation centers, as well as going door to door in the neighborhoods around drop-off sites, while training residents to assist and providing stipends to those doing the outreach. “We found, when writing the USDA CFWR grant application and doing some community engagement about which organizations can do what, that the community-based organizations doing the organics recycling and urban farming don’t have staff to do outreach and marketing,” notes Proft. “That led the City to tap ZWP to create the opportunity for people to learn about the food scraps diversion services available in Providence.”
ZWP has primarily been partnering with Garden Time, Inc. for the outreach and education tasks, hiring graduates of Garden Time’s Green Reentry program to connect with hundreds of households in underserved neighborhoods (largely within federally identified environmental justice zones) and educate them about practical, localized composting options. The USDA grant funds, along with funds from ILSR’s Composting for Community Mini-Grant, have been used to pay the stipends for part-time outreach staff.
Harvest Cycle utilizes word of mouth, signage on its bike trailers, outreach at farmers’ markets, and Groundworks RI’s website to publicize its food scraps drop-off and collection services.
Carla and Victor from Zero Waste Providence doing outreach at the Smith Hill Block Party.
Victor is a graduate of Garden Time’s Green Reentry Job Training program.
Credit: Groundwork RI
Harvest Cycle Director Ella doing outreach at Smith Hill Block Party. Credit: Carla Doughty
The City would not be able to afford, given budget constraints, initiating and managing its own food scraps collection program. Therefore, the City’s ability to apply for grant funds that can be passed through to existing service providers has made access to food scraps diversion more available for City residents.
Kevin Proft, Deputy Director of Sustainability, City of Providence
Compost Markets
Harvest Cycle uses a portion of the compost it produces in the gardens where composting is done; most is given to subscribers whose food scraps were collected and to other urban growers in the community. Subscribers can have compost delivered in burlap sacks or pick it up at one of the composting sites. Once the West End Compost Hub is up and operating, Harvest Cycle anticipates it will also start selling compost.
The Community Compost Depot holds compost giveaway events to distribute the compost it makes.
Costs & Benefits: The City
The City of Providence does not have money invested in food scraps collection and composting, other than about $45,000 worth of staff time that is needed to administer the federal grants. “It was challenging to get our grant recipients under contract and up and running, which included various City procurement processes,” says Proft. “Now, there is less work on a daily basis, though we still meet regularly with subrecipients and spend time on grant-related tasks, including reporting.” He adds that the City would not be able to afford, given budget constraints, initiating and managing its own food scraps collection program. Therefore, the City’s ability to apply for grant funds that can be passed through to existing service providers has made access to food scraps diversion more available for City residents.”
Costs & Benefits: Harvest Cycle
As a nonprofit organization, Groundwork RI has the ability to apply for grants to fund Harvest Cycle’s operations. “If we wanted to offer the services we do without the grants, we would have to charge more for food scraps collection subscriptions,” explains Kilpatrick Kotner. “That could limit our ability to make our services accessible to more members of the community.” Prior to funding via the USDA and SWIFR grants, the City supported community composting on the composting page of its website, and on occasion, wrote about the organizations offering collection and composting in its newsletter, she adds.
Collaborating more closely with the City of Providence helped Harvest Cycle navigate zoning requirements for its new composting facility. The site is in a mixed-use industrial zone and there was no explicit language about composting as a permitted use. Harvest Cycle requested, in writing, that the Zoning office explicitly state that composting is a permitted use of the site, which was done, helping to foster a relationship between the two entities.
Another significant benefit of Harvest Cycle’s operations is job creation. In addition to Kilpatrick Kotner, the organization employs three bike haulers and a part-time person who focuses on processing. Its youth program provides additional composting assistance. Two to three youth leaders (ages 18 to early 20s) are involved in processing on a full-time basis. Up to 15 youth staff are involved between summer and school-year programming. These youth are high schoolers aged 15 to 18. In addition, 12 to 15 youth are employed by Groundwork RI for eight weeks in the summer and work on a variety of urban stewardship programs, including composting. A smaller group of six to eight remains employed during the school year; composting is a larger portion of the work that they do during that time. Groundwork RI’s youth program (Green Team) hires youth primarily from “federally recognized disadvantaged communities” in Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls, explains Kilpatrick Kotner. Green Team members are primarily youth of color from low-income families.
One former Green Team member is now a full-time staff member with Groundwork RI and runs the Pawtucket/Central Falls youth program. He spent several years on the Green Team during the summer and school year, and gained a lot of composting experience at several of Harvest Cycle’s processing sites. In summer 2024, Groundwork RI installed a 3-bin composting system at the Galego Community Farm, located at the Galego Court public housing complex in Pawtucket. Throughout 2025, food scraps have been collected from the residents of Galego Court and processed at the garden. The Groundwork RI employee and his youth staff do door-to-door outreach to residents, distribute buckets, collect food scraps, and process on-site. The compost is used in the garden.
Private-Public Partnership (PPP) Lessons Learned
The City of Providence anchored its successful EPA and USDA grant applications on utilizing — and expanding — the capacities of existing food scraps diversion service providers in the city. In its applications, it was able to illustrate how infrastructure dollars could be spent to divert food scraps from disposal, reduce methane emissions, and benefit underserved environmental justice communities.
Grant recipients were awarded funds to make capital investments that had been out of reach; e.g., to purchase collection vehicles and build out composting infrastructure. The PPPs also illustrate the role that community composters play in laying the groundwork for food scraps recycling infrastructure that the municipality can leverage with its access to public funding.
Keep Compost Local: A Roadmap for Local Governments to Build Community Prosperity with Composting
A report providing guidance for municipalities to support and partner with local composting initiatives, meeting their composting targets while fostering myriad economic and cross-sectoral benefits.
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