Food Waste No More

Madison will soon have food scrap drop-off sites. Will a processor follow?

Madison Magazine monthly Innovation column, May 2020

You may have followed the city of Madison’s ongoing attempts to collect food scraps. Last fall, 165 households participated in another curbside pickup program.

Although it was technically declared a success, with 4 tons of waste diverted from landfills in just eight weeks, the city learned it wouldn’t make fiscal sense to scale the program. The route took five hours, largely because the garbage collectors had to check all food scraps for contaminants before pickup. They collected only a quarter of the volume normal trash routes can manage.

But there is a silver lining.

To continue reading please pick up the January 2021 issue of Madison Magazine at area newsstands, or click through to the online version here.

—Maggie Ginsberg is an associate editor at Madison Magazine and a long-time award-winning freelance writer. Innovation is her monthly column for Madison Magazine focused on startups, entrepreneurism and innovative ideas coming out of Dane County, Wisconsin.