Hi Michelle. Thank you, and good question! Generally speaking, schools are able to incur a savings but it's difficult to offset the cost completely since food scrap hauling costs tend to be higher than landfill and recycling costs. That being said, we recommend that schools rightsize dumpsters (ensure that dumpster size and pickup frequency actually match how much waste they are generating) when starting a composting program. Quite often, schools are getting daily pickups when they don't need them or their dumpsters are too large, so they may be able to reduce pickup frequency and dumpster size/quantity even before they start diverting food scraps.
Awesome presentation. Thank you. Have you been able to quantity any savings in the waste hauling process to make composting revenue neutral?
Hi Michelle. Thank you, and good question! Generally speaking, schools are able to incur a savings but it's difficult to offset the cost completely since food scrap hauling costs tend to be higher than landfill and recycling costs. That being said, we recommend that schools rightsize dumpsters (ensure that dumpster size and pickup frequency actually match how much waste they are generating) when starting a composting program. Quite often, schools are getting daily pickups when they don't need them or their dumpsters are too large, so they may be able to reduce pickup frequency and dumpster size/quantity even before they start diverting food scraps.