City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. so so Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Ed Flynn, City Council for District 2, Chair of the City Council Committee on City Services. Today is September 18th, 2026. The exact time is 10.08. I do apologize for starting this meeting eight minutes late. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at Boston dot gov slash city council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.csit at boston.gov and will be a part of the record and available to all city councilors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of the hearing or maybe throughout the hearing. Individuals will be called on in order in which they sign up and will have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the City Council Chamber. And if you are looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, Ron Cobb, at ron, R-O-N, for the link and your name will be added to the list. I also want to say thank you to Ron Cobb for being here and for Ethan as well and appreciate the city council central staff for supporting this hearing. Today's hearing is on Docket 0773. This is an order for a hearing to discuss the status of the City of Boston's curbside food waste collection program. The matter was sponsored by City Councillors Gabriela Coletta Zapata, Councillor Sharon Durkan, and Councillor Luzzi Louis-Jean, who was referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026. And today, I am joined by Councillor Koleta-Zapata, Councillor Louis-Jean. At this time, I don't have any letters of absence, but if I do receive them, I will read them into the record. I'm going to give my council colleagues the opportunity to give an opening statement, and I'll give an opening statement after them. But I'm going to go to Councillor Coletta Zapata to provide an opening statement, then I will go to Councillor Louis-Jean, and then I'll give a brief one myself. Councillor Coletta Zapata, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to my co-sponsor, Councillor Louis-Jean, for being here. I filed this hearing because Boston has made meaningful progress on food waste diversion, and as the program evolves, the Council should understand where we are, what is working, who still lacks access, and what it will take to build the system we want. And I just want to acknowledge folks in the administration who are here. Chief Sweat, thank you. Director Osgood. And I'm so sorry I don't have your name. I want to be sure to get it correct if you wouldn't mind just saying it out loud.

Avantika Mathur. I work in waste reduction. Okay. What's your first name? Avantika.

Avantika, okay. Thank you so much for being here, Avantika. Our zero waste plan established an ambitious goal of diverting at least 80% of our waste from disposal by 2030, sorry, 2035. Food waste has to be a significant part of that conversation. When food ends up in our traditional trash stream, we're not only wasting a resource, we're adding unnecessary volume to a waste system that costs the city and has environmental consequences. Our curbside program launched a pilot in 2022, provides free collection to residents in buildings with six units or fewer. And Project Oscar provides community drop-off locations available to residents regardless of building types. We know demand exists. Enrollment and curbside collection reach capacity. And residents have been waiting to participate. Beginning this fall, the administration will be making some changes. And I think that there's opportunity here. And I look forward to learning about what those changes are. And I think we need to be clear about the trade-off for existing participants. Collection frequency is being talked about, and we'll learn more about it today. And so finally, I just want us to understand the larger question, what Boston's food or long-term food waste infrastructure looks like. How do we build a system that is equitable, accessible, and environmentally responsible? And again, I'm grateful to our administration, our partners, for the work that has gotten us here. And I'm looking forward to the discussion on how we build it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Coletta Zapata. Next, Councilor Louis-Jean. Councilor Louis-Jean, you have the floor.

Good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be here. I want to thank my co-sponsor, the lead sponsor, Councilor Coletta Zapata and all the work that she does on this issue and on environmental issues in general. I want to thank the Chief for being here, Director, and Avantika, thank you. It's nice to meet you and thank you for the work that you do. I'm a big fan of our curbside food waste program, which is one of the reasons why I asked the lead sponsor to co-sponsor, and I'd like to hear about sort of what is the good and the bad, and to talk about the benefits of the curbside food program. I also know that, I don't know if I'm a fan, but my mother's a fan, my sister's been trying to get into the program, and so I think it also has so many other benefits for households. Like for me, my trash never smells anymore because I'm freezing my food scraps and my food waste, and every Friday, like this morning, I put it out and they come and pick it up. Wanna shout out Henri, who is the driver who comes every Friday to pick up my food waste, lives in Revere from Guatemala, so just wanted to say, he waited for me this morning as I was getting home from the gym so that I could run in my house and bring out my little compost bag, didn't have a lot. So I'm a big fan of this program, and I'm a big fan of expansion of this program, And, you know, I had a conversation knowing that this hearing was happening this morning with Analia about some of the challenges that we're seeing in the program. I think mostly financial and wanting to think about what expansion or partnership for expansion could look like. What does it look like in a time of fiscal challenges for us to want to continue championing programs that we see as net goods for our city and for our residents? So, yeah, just looking forward to the conversation. I want to thank the lead sponsor for her work. Thank you.

And before I give a brief statement, again, I want to acknowledge the administration team that's here, Brian Sweat, the Chief of Environment, Energy, Clean Space, Chris Osgood, Chief of Streets, and Avantika. Thank you for being with us as well. Thank you for the important work that you are doing. And thank you to the sponsors in the administration for joining us. The curbside food waste program is a great opportunity for residents to turn their food scraps into fertile soil instead of sending it to the landfill. This pilot should be extended and made more available for residents across the city. At the same time, I do believe it's important that the containers that are used are properly sealed to address the serious public health, quality of life issues of pest control. My wife and I are, I think we're the only house on our street that is part of the pilot in South Boston. It's very limited in my neighborhood, which is the lower end section of South Boston. But when we put our little green barrel out every Friday, people ask me frequently, how do we extend the program? So I want to say thank you to our sponsors for doing that. I also think that there's an opportunity for us to educate residents about how to properly separate and store food waste so that everyone understands how to participate in the program effectively. Clear guidance and outreach will be critical as we look to expand the program to other neighborhoods across the city. I also believe part of the solution also includes language and communication access and ensuring that we're able to expand this program into communities of color, but also focusing on neighborhoods that historically have been challenging for various environmental concerns, such as Chinatown or the Leather District or the South End as well, public housing. I'm going to stop there. Chief, do you want to start with an opening statement? Then you can pass it along to whoever else in your team would like to give an opening statement.

That sounds great. So again, Chris Osgood, delighted to be here. Thank you to the three of you for your leadership and partnership on this work. Joined by Chief Brian Sweat and joined by Avantika Mathur, who's the Director of Waste Policy and Planning for the City. I want to give a lot of credit to Avantika, as well as Dennis Roach, our Superintendent of Waste Reduction, who has done a lot of work around this. We were going to do a very quick overview of our waste services in general, food waste in particular, some of the changes that Councillor Koleta-Zapata talked about, and then as all three of you touched on, sort of the path ahead. Really starting with, if I can advance the slide. Just starting with a quick picture of overall waste volumes in the City of Boston. So there's about 1.1 million tons of waste that are generated in the city of Boston. This is from a 2018 waste audit. Roughly 80% of that is from the commercial, institutional, or industrial space. So about 20% of that is actually from our homes. 20% of that is really that sort of curbside collection that the city focuses on and delivers through its public works department. So about 240,000 tons that are collected from about 250,000 households. Service that we provide every week across the city costs about $70 million, a little over $70 million in overall investment. Those contracts are in three different places. It's about $45 million of contract costs on the collection side. This is the actual sort of the pickups that are happening of trash and recycling of yard waste, about $20 million of disposal for trash and recyclables that go to a variety of different places, a materials recovery facility in Charlestown in the case of our recyclables, and several waste energy plants in the case of our trash. And then about $8 million that funds things like our food waste program that we're going to talk more about, mattress collection, and the household hazardous waste days that the team runs across the city throughout the year. That is the financial picture. This is largely obviously a conversation about food waste. And as all of you touched on in your opening remarks, this has been a huge focus for us really since our release of the zero waste plan in 2019 because it is such a large part of the waste stream. And there's so much potential for what could be done with that if it is taken out of the trash and sort of handled in a different way, whether it is from a road and abatement perspective or an environmental perspective or a cost perspective. What you see in the upper right hand corner of this slide is a pie chart that shows the breakdown of waste that is going, that is coming from Boston, got a snapshot from roughly 2018, but shows in that sort of light blue wedge that about a third of what we are disposing is compostable, whether that is yard waste or food waste. There's a huge opportunity to take things out of the waste stream and redirect them. And as both of you, all of you have touched on, there are two principal pilot programs we have been running. to do just this. In 2014, we launched something called Project Oscar, which is our 24-7, 365 available bins that people can drop off food waste at. There's 20 of those across the city of Boston. We collect about 132 tons of food waste every year through that program. And always looking for feedback about where to sort of expand or adjust that program. We'll get a little bit more into the numbers in a moment. That program costs about $120,000. The other program is our curbside collection program. This one was launched in 2022. Today, it services about 27,000 households, as Councillor Lejeune also referenced. There is a waitlist that we will get more into that we now have a path to be able to bring everybody who's on the waitlist into the program. And through that program, we're collecting around 2,800 tons annually of food waste. so a significant opportunity and a significant progress in those programs this next slide is just a quick snapshot of the growth that we've seen in the curbside collection program again started with about 10 000 enrolled participating households in in 2022 climbed up to a high point of 28 000 enrolled we did notice that a number of households that were enrolled actually weren't necessarily using the program which is why we are now down at 27,000 participating households out of the entirety of 250,000 households we serve in the city of Boston for trash and recycling services. Again, we have a wait list right now of about 1,600 in our city. On the left, you see the rough breakdown of enrollment in our curbside collection program by neighborhood with Dorchester and Jamaica Plain as the two largest participating neighborhoods Apologies, these numbers are incredibly small, but we will make sure we get the deck to all of you to sort of see what that breakdown looks like. And then on the right, you can see the tonnage that we are collecting by neighborhood through the Project Oscar program, with a fair amount of quickly coming from Jamaica Plain, the south end and the north end, as well as from Charlestown. As we are We want to make sure, as all of you have referenced, that we are taking this to locations that are maximizing the environmental value of the food waste. And we are doing that in some cases, but there's progress certainly for us to make in this regard. So for Project Oscar, all 132 tons that we collect are handled by our partner called Black Earth, who take the food waste essentially to a composting facility in the North Shore to be converted into compost that can be used as a high quality soil additive for households. The larger source of food waste for us, though, is obviously the curbside collection program at about 2,800 tons annually. Of that 2,800 tons, a portion of it does go to composting. This, again, is the higher quality output from food waste. About 15 to 20 percent of it is taken to a different North Shore composting facility. But 80 to 85 percent of it is actually commingled at the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District with wastewater through an anaerobic digestion facility. And there, the vast majority of it is converted into biogas, and some portion of it about another 15% becomes digested, which can be added as a fertilizer. And one of the things, and we'll talk a little bit more about this, that we are interested in is finding a way to work with other municipalities and across the Commonwealth to expand the composting capacity, which is to some degree a limitation on how much we can expand the program towards taking food waste and delivering actual compost as a result of it. To quickly talk about sort of how we've been communicating these programs, and this builds, Councilor Flynn, off of a comment that you made, with a lot of credit to Avantika and a lot of credit to the waste reduction team, there's been a significant amount of community outreach, both on the MBTA, sort of in communities and online, including translating the materials into five different languages so that we are expanding the number of our constituents who are aware of and can participate in the program overall. One of the things that we have heard sort of loud and clear is that there is a wait list of people who want to be able to join the curbside composting program. That is why we are switching the, our core reason why we are switching the weekly program to a biweekly program in October, starting on October 5th. By going from weekly to biweekly, it has several elements which can be advantageous. One, it allows us to be able to actually have everybody who's on the wait list be able to enroll in the program. Second, it allows us to be able to expand the capacity. So we actually can go beyond the wait list to add additional enrollees across the city of Boston. That'll expand us from 2,700 to ideally numbers which are far beyond what the current pilot has and get us a higher percentage of overall households in Boston that are enrolled. It also sort of better matches what we're actually seeing on the street. Garbage to Gardens, who is our terrific contractor for that program, is seeing that roughly 70% of the green bins that you have all referenced are sort of out there at pickup time. Not everybody is using the pickup bins every single week. And so by going to biweekly, you probably better match the way in which those services are actually being used. And in addition, sort of have fewer vehicles actually driving city streets for pickup during collection days. We achieved that balance. We also, through this switch, save about $700,000 of overall costs in the program, which is another important consideration for us. What this will actually look like is essentially having the collection schedule be in two different zones. There'll be zone A, which will have a collection, it's biweekly collection schedule starting on October 5th. Between now and October 5th, it'll remain on a weekly schedule. Essentially, Zone A that you see on the screen would have a collection on October 5th, the week of October 5th, and then the week of October 19th. And then starting the week of October 12th, the biweekly schedule for Zone B would start. There's been a huge amount of communication which has started and more to come to individuals enrolled in this program. That's going to include direct outreach at residences, digital communications, which have already started, and more to come. We certainly welcome your feedback and ideas and appreciate this hearing as an opportunity for us to communicate this broadly to constituents. Two other bits of context, which definitely both Chief Swett and Avantika, please feel free to add here. One thing which is, I think, important, longer-term context as we look at this program, is that MassDEP has been looking at a series of waistbands, looking at principally right now looking at commercial food waste, but they have signaled that they would expect that there may be a residential food waste ban that could come into play, not before 2028. Importantly, we actually, through the programs that we have already outlined, we are actually in compliance with what we would expect DEP to promulgate in 2028. So we are several steps ahead of of what DEP may have put in place and have basically been in compliance since 2022, since the start of our curbside program. All right, last quick slide. I'm going to turn it over to my fellow panelists for any additions and corrections and to all of your questions. As we look at what's ahead, there's sort of three areas that we are very focused on. One is understanding sort of how on the residential side we can continue to Expand enrollment, as all of you spoke about. Increase tonnage and increase utilization. And in the near term, that's going to be a focus on looking at how the service change has allowed us to do or impacted those three things. Have we actually enrolled more constituents? We believe this is a clear path to do that. Will that allow us to expand tonnage? Does that better match the actual sort of frequency of pickup with the use of the program? The second thing which is important, and Chief Swek can talk much more about this than I can, This is also an opportunity for us to think about all of those parts of our waste stream that are not from residents. Again, 80% of the trash, recycling, food waste that is generated in the city of Boston is institutional or commercial or industrial. And there are paths, things like food recovery as well as food waste collection, that are important for us to focus on in addition to our residential programs as we think about the challenge in front of us. The third thing, which is a really important element of this program, is that a really important element of our work going forward is to think about how we just expand capacity in our region and in the Commonwealth to be able to handle food waste and food waste composting. Knowing that that is a priority as an outcome for food waste that we collect, we do know that we need additional capacity within the region or within the Commonwealth to be able to handle collection if collection does increase across all those sectors. So with that, I will turn it over to my two fellow panelists in case there's anything to correct or add, and then turn it over to all of you for your questions and comments.

That was great, Chris. I'll just add a couple items. One, what we are finding, and Avantika can give details on other communities in Massachusetts that are providing curbside food waste recovery, is that every other week is the norm. And so one of the things, obviously, we launched this as a pilot. We wanted to see how many people were willing to participate. This is the trend that we're seeing across the Commonwealth is that that's the right cadence. One of the reasons why I think this really, this near term, and then we'll talk about longer term, but this near term shift really checks a lot of really important boxes, is that the last thing we want is sort of large food waste trucks driving through neighborhoods looking for bins to pick up. It causes traffic, it causes emissions, it's not actually recovering food waste. So this shift to every other week allows us to pick up more food waste, add more households, save money, and have fewer trucks on the street, like have half of many trucks on the street at a given time. In this environment that we're in, that is a lot of wins. This is not the long-term solution for food waste recovery and diversion for Boston. We're all on the same page, they're like, We want to find ways of getting higher and better use products out of this. And so one of the things we have recognized is that Boston alone in terms of this 2,800 tons a year is too big a scale of an amount to go to composting. There aren't enough composting facilities that are willing to take that on. And so we need to start thinking creatively both with the state about bringing the sector, the composting sector up to scale as the state proceeds with food waste recovery requirements as well as thinking creatively about Maybe we have a collection system that you put out to bid, but it's going to multiple end drop-off points that are smaller in scale that actually can turn this into composting. Because the reality is, as Chris mentioned, most of the food waste we're collecting, 85% of that food waste, is going to anaerobic digestion. That is the same as if folks in Boston had grounded up in an insinkerator and sent it to Deer Island. And that's great, that energy is used at Deer Island, and then, you know, it's the same digestate that goes out, and then that can be used on non-food product, aggregable land. But, like, you know, the idea, so I don't want anybody to think that we are satisfied that the idea of, like, trucking 85% of the waste to a different anaerobic digestion is a long-term solution, when, you know, grinding it up in your incinerator is the same thing now, and then, obviously, we'll want to find compost solutions going forward. So this is the right, in my opinion, as sort of the environmental chief, This is the right move at this point in time to make this particular program more efficient and effective and checks a lot of boxes while we continue to explore how do we expand this industry to scale so that really more of this food waste is coming back to Boston. The second item I'd highlight, and thank you, Chris, for touching on this, this is part of, there's the, There's the waste management end of this, which we obviously presented. And then there's the food circularity end of this, which I want to highlight. We are working really hard as an administration, as a city, to make sure that as much of the healthy and nutritious food that's coming into Boston is getting to folks who need it. And we spent a lot of time over the last couple of years, and I think I saw all of you at various ribbon cuttings and openings at the cold storage facility in Newmarket, where we are now supporting millions of meals a year with recovered food coming into a cold storage facility that the city helped fund with ARPA funding, and then going out to our retail distribution to food pantries and soup kitchens. That to me is the highest misuse of food, is making sure that as little of it as possible is entering our waste room, and as much of it as possible is getting to folks who need it. And then obviously the scraps and the things that do get thrown out, how do we avoid that going to traditional garbage? So we're spending as much time thinking about that, and we continue to have opportunities in food recovery.

had here was the composting infrastructure. We have small farms that can accept a few hundred tons every week, which is more than what the Boston capacity is right now. But the bigger challenge with expanding that infrastructure is that siting and permitting is a big challenge. Being in neighborhoods where there are residential housing, it's hard to have that. With orders, a lot of those issues just kind of hinder expanding composting facilities within and close to the city. And that is one of the bigger reasons why a lot of our tonnage cannot go to compost. The other part is that if you want to scale up very rapidly and 80 facilities more easily able to take the food waste, also because there's a whole education angle where we need to tell residents how to separate, what to put, what not to put, small stickers that you see on your food are called contaminants. The AD facility would take it, but the compost facility has to maintain its standards for PFAS contamination. So they are very wary of taking stuff like that. So all of this kind of needs to go hand in hand to make sure that we are able to get it to a point where we really want our food waste to end up and become a final product.

Thank you. We were also joined by Councillor Murphy and Councillor Fitzgerald as well. I do have an absence letter that I would like to read into the record. Dear Chair Flynn, Mr. Clerk, Council colleagues, I regret to inform you that I am unable to attend this morning's Committee on City Services hearing on docket 0773, order for a hearing to discuss the status of the City of Boston's curbside food waste program. I will follow up with additional questions upon reviewing my staff notes and watching the recording. Please do not hesitate to contact my office with any questions. Councillor Pepin from District 5. At this time, I do want to give each council colleague the opportunity to ask questions to the panel. For this round, I'll give six minutes, and I'm going to start with Councillor Colletta Zapata. Councillor Colletta Zapata you have the floor.

Thank you chair and I want to thank the panel for their presentation. I'm so sorry chief Oscar, I totally, sorry. You're no longer director of interim chief, so I apologize for that. And thank you for your work on this and for the really enlightening presentation that you have. So this is, I mean, overall, it seems like this is a really good thing. I think this is a good example of good government in action. So we took time to implement this and make sure that we were getting it right, but this is a good, again, example of being able to pivot and figure out what's working, what isn't working. Not only will we Will we be able to serve more people, potentially getting more people off the wait list? There's going to be a cost savings there of, what was it, $700,000 for the program. And there's also going to be less trucks on the street on a weekly basis, which translates to, I guess this is my first question, how much carbon emissions that we'll be potentially taking out of there that we breathe on a weekly basis.

Yeah, I mean, when you think about the transportation, it's cutting it in half. you know, a little bit less than half, because we're going to be adding people off the wait list, and if they're on existing routes, that's not adding it, but there may be new routes, which would be great. I think the carbon emissions for this aggregate program, just to sort of put this in context, the carbon emissions of waste in Boston doesn't move the needle from Boston's aggregate emissions. We are still entirely driven by buildings. Our two-thirds of our emissions in Boston and transportation is basically the rest. So it's a great question to be asking. A program of this size just doesn't have that scale. What I'm particularly excited about is the local emissions of trucks driving through communities and neighborhoods. These are largely diesel trucks. So the carbon emissions is sort of a wash in a program like this. But the local emissions in terms of what people are breathing, and then I have the same experience walking on Monday. We're on Monday pickup. When I'm walking with my kids to the bus stop, we're breathing in whatever we're breathing in in the neighborhood at that particular time. And so the fewer trucks that we have on morning pickup, that's a good thing, in particular, as we can expand the program.

And so we're serving 2,700 households today. There's 1,600 on the wait list. How many do, sorry. 27,000. 27,000, okay.

So we're serving about 10% of the households in Boston currently.

So 27,000 currently being serviced, and then there's 1,600 on the wait list? And we anticipate that we'll be able to now serve all of them that are on the wait list? Yes. Because we are going biweekly, if more people figure out, oh, they're expanding the program, how are we able to maybe even expand on that? Is there even a limit beyond the 1,600 that are currently on the wait list?

We have a projection from our vendor that is budgeted in our contract. This is how much we've received in the waitlist last year. So 1,600 in the last year, we have double the capacity available beyond the waitlist if it was to grow. So we would be able to offer anybody over and above the waitlist if they wanted to become part of the program for this year. We have clarity for this year.

That's great. And you had mentioned about outreach and communication in District 1. We love the benefits of this program. We have a lot of Project Oscar bins. And so if folks have, theoretically, food waste in the interim between weeks, they're going to be able to drop them off at Project Oscar. How are you communicating this to residents? Is it happening in multiple languages? Is there anything that we can do as counselors to help get the word out? We'd love to hear from you on that.

We have a whole communication docket that is going out, multiple emails going from the vendor. Our websites are updated. We had a very thorough FAQ section that we have with our teams, our ops teams, 311, anybody calling in. We are working really hard to have a starter kit that has multiple language access still in the works, but we're trying to make sure that anybody who needs information is able to access it. We also have the Trash Day app, which has a notification system. You're able to set reminders on your app. All of those changes are communicated by that. And emails and explainer videos that we're talking about how to store your waste for the two weeks and any other questions. Anybody on our team, zero waste email, garbage garden email is happy to answer.

Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to get into, I'm sorry.

And to build on that, I mean, I think Any sort of amplification that all of you are interested in doing to let folks who are enrolled know of the schedule change, those who are interested in enrolling to reach out, and people across the city to know about the Project Oscar opportunities, those are sort of three things I think that are very useful to help amplify. So I appreciate the opportunity to do that.

Thank you. Just getting into this question of 85% versus the 15%, For folks that are listening in, and this is directly to you, Chief, because I know that you can answer this. I'm just thinking about the comparative environmental benefits between, and I guess overall greenhouse gas impact of anaerobic digestion versus traditional composting. Can you just expand on that and why it's so important where we're thinking about this now and scaling up and what it may mean to partner regionally with other cities and municipalities to maximize what we're getting from what we're collecting?

Yeah, I think so both anaerobic digestion and composting are good ways of preventing greenhouse gas emissions from food waste. And the question is really like, what's the value of the end product? So from a composting perspective, if we can get the high value food scraps and food waste to go to compost, that is a really valuable input into the agricultural system. If it is blended with wastewater, the traditional model, which is what we're doing, is anaerobic digestion, which is capturing the energy use and capturing the methane gas as things decompose, usually on site at a place that can use it. So it's usually at a waste energy plant. And so in Deer Island, they use that to actually power their facility. So that is a way of using that energy. There is about 15% of what goes through in anaerobic digestion comes out as a solid at the end. Because it's blended with wastewater and because of concerns with PFAS, that is not a product that you can then put back on farms that are producing food that we're eating. So it does limit the type of agricultural use that fertilizer can be used for. But both of those are better than just taking it and burning it at a trash plant. So I think the idea of getting that 35% of our organics out of the traditional garbage waste stream is great environmentally. I think the highest and best use is getting as much of that into composting as possible, but we just don't have the capacity, you know, in Massachusetts or locally. We produce far more food waste than the capacity of composting systems.

Thank you. This is fascinating to me. I know that you and I could talk about this for a very long time, but my time is up. But I'll just comment and just say thank you for understanding and acknowledging that this is just a short-term solution and thinking more long-term about what we can do as a Commonwealth rather than just being this big actor in the system and really driving what's happening in the North Shore and Lawrence and other places. So please consider me a partner in this work and I'm really grateful for your time and being here and just overall the success of the program and understanding that we could fine tune some things and make it even better for the residents of Boston. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Koleta-Zabata. Councilor Huizhen, you have the floor. Thank you, and I want to apologize.

She called you director, so I called you director.

But I want to thank you. How many all-trippers do you have in East Boston? Well, I just say that that's an interesting question, because I'm looking at the website right now, and it says East Boston has one. But it also says that Mattapan doesn't have any.

I think we are always looking to adjust the 20 locations and even think about adding additional locations. So happy to work with you on that. And why is 20 the number? It's simply where the program is today. There's no clear cap on why it should be 20. We can think about finding a way of expanding that program with additional revenue.

Yeah, because I think there's, you know, I'm going to say something that is going to hopefully explain myself well. I think especially in communities of color, especially in immigrant communities, and I'm going to speak as someone who grew up in Mattapan, there are a lot of ways in which composting and recycling happens naturally. And Mattapan is a neighborhood with a strong Haitian community, strong black community, strong immigrant community, and I think it's a neighborhood that would take to composting programs if explained and understood. I think one of the reasons why my mother loves the Corbicide Food Waste Program is because she always sort of did a version of that. And so I think that there is real opportunity there for us to do expansion. I'd also love to see a version of the map or of the graph of the neighborhood community bin tonnages by neighborhood. This is reminding me of my statistics days, but I don't know how to explain this the perfect way. It would probably be like the circles of showing usage by neighborhood population. Because... I don't think that—I think it would show us a lot of trends, that the highest usage does not necessarily mean the most populated neighborhoods. And I thought you stated at first that it was Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, blah, blah, but I don't see that on the map—on the graph. MR. Sorry.

On the—and definitely to our office. For the enrollment on—in the curbside program, that is what we're seeing.

MS. Jamaica Plain, Dorchester.

MR. And as the top people are enrolled in the curbside program. For tonnages on Project Oscar, sorry, the chart is a tonnage by Project Oscar. The map is enrollees in the curbside program.

Okay. I'd love for there to be a version of both of these. It also takes into consideration population of neighborhood because I think that would show sort of equity discrepancies. It would show language barriers where we need to do more work. Yep. And so I think that would be helpful. It makes sense that Longwood, for example, doesn't look like there's anyone, because there aren't maybe the households. But for some of these neighborhoods where there are, there's a big population. OK. And I think Councilor Kaleta Zapata may have asked a question that touched this, but I wasn't fully hearing, or I was trying to work on a question. What are the benefits of taking the food scraps, food waste out of the regular mainstream trash for the city?

Yeah, I think at a high level, so the rest of the garbage that's collected in the black bins traditionally goes to a waste energy plant in which one?

Braintree Saugus.

Braintree Saugus Revere. So it is burned. And so, but it's also commingled with everything else that people throw out. So it's commingled with plastics and metals and packaging. So you're taking- The mattresses, are the mattresses there as well? No, well, no, we no longer pick up, I mean, other communities are putting mattresses into those waste rooms. We don't in Boston. We have a very successful sort of mattress diversion program.

And where do those mattresses, sorry, I'm not asking a question without a question. Where are those mattresses going?

Charlestown, but I can get back to you on okay.

Okay, and they get like deconstructed 75% of the mattress material is recyclable, which is the reason why that we spent awesome Thank you, and we don't as a reminder We do not want people picking up mattresses on the curb because of bed bugs and stuff, right? It's not a yes, like we don't recycle those on site or reuse those on site so So we want to avoid like the waste energy is great if it's better than just waste sitting in a landfill. But like we want to reduce that because that is not a circular economy. We spend a lot of energy and and cost creating food. And so you want to keep those food waste and sort of higher circular uses. And so composting is sort of that highest circular use because you're taking all of that organic matter and putting it back on to produce further organic matter. So we're fully supportive of the state wanting to get food waste out of the waste stream. The question is like, what are the available highest and best uses? If it is commingled with wastewater, that kind of downgrades it because then you're mixing it with waste, you're mixing it with those pathogens, you're mixing it with PFAS, which is very hard to get out of. So it limits then the end use of whatever the solid is that's coming out of that. The challenge has been, I mean the highest and best availability is people being able to compost in their homes and then use that compost because then they are highly incentivized to make sure that that is a clean product without a whole lot of contaminants. But we fully appreciate that's not a viable option for most Boston households. But it's like how do we keep that as close as possible? I think we've done a great job on the composting of yard waste and being able to get that back out to communities in boston to use on their own gardens but the challenge is again the the contaminant process and then making sure that you know what that waste is um and what that ideally the food waste is is is used for its highest available use based on the quality of the product thank you thank you i have three more questions oh did you have okay um three more questions so i might have to go to second round but um

Like I told you this morning, I just caught my, as I was coming home early this morning, I just caught the food waste bin. And I didn't have like a big bag this week. It was just like a half-filled green bag. I keep it in my freezer. My mom does it differently, right? She keeps her compost in. In her kitchen and she cooks a lot more than I do. Right. So she has a lot more food scraps. And so I think the biweekly is great because today this morning I said, like, if I'm not able to catch the then I'll just wait till next week and it's not a big deal. So that's perfect for someone like me. for someone like my mother who has a lot of food scraps and who doesn't freeze, I'm wondering what sort of education can be done or should be done moving to a biweekly schedule for those. My mom also has multiple freezers, and all of them are full. So maybe freezing isn't the best method of maintaining for a two-week period, but what is the education alongside how we wait for a two-week, for those who they need that two-week, that two-week period may be a bit of an adjustment.

Squeezing is so far the best recommended solution in this case, but if you're running out of capacity, I can check in with our team and see how to work with that. Specific case of you know, you've exhausted your freezing capacity. What do you do? I also just don't think that my mother is alone I think that there are multiple people who actually aren't freezing and who are Because I go I go in people's homes and I see it that they have the bins in their kitchens and I take it out The other two things that we're offering is upgrading your bin size So if you have the bucket you can go to the bigger bin you could request an additional bin You could have an additional countertop bin All of these as containment solutions until your pickup day comes is one of the other things that we can combine with this rollout.

Okay, thank you. I'll have more questions, but I'll wait for the second round. Thank you.

Thank you. We are also joined by Councillor Sharon Durkan as well. Just reminding the colleagues that just came in, I'm giving each city councillor six minutes, and we probably will do a second round Second round as well. If you go over the six minutes, continue asking your question. I'm not going to cut you off. Council Murphy, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here. And just want to shout out my first term here on the council. Council of Bach was a strong advocate for this and Project Oscar and getting the green bins out. And I see some. Definitely one at my mom's, so I do have questions about the biweekly also. She repurposes and uses it for many different reasons, but 10% seems low. I know we started this, obviously, with the hope to expand, and there's a waiting list. But is there an education piece? And where are those 10% of the homes? Do we have the data of who's using them now?

Yes, it's a great question. I think it really underscores the fact that this is a pilot, and a pilot, as both Chief Sweat and Monica talked about, is we are looking to learn and continue to figure out how do we actually scale this. So we know where the enrollees are. We don't have granular information of use by enrollee in neighborhood, but happy to get you the by neighborhood breakdown.

How would we? Do the collectors keep data? Because I noticed some neighbors don't ever put them out. Some do. Some may be repurposing all of it. So how are we communicating with those who are in this pilot program?

So around there, that's a pretty good job. They have a lot of ways to reach out. They send regular communications. They also canvass. They go door to door, speak to residents to understand. We have an audit process in place to make sure that we are servicing the residents who are using the program. We started that last fall just to figure out, can we repurpose the bins that are not being used to give them to homes that need them? And in that process, the vendor also engages and talks about the challenges that the residents are facing, trying to get them to use the service more. And if they repeatedly have a protocol, if they repeatedly notice a lack of action or set-outs, they would take the bin away and then send it to a home. So that's one part of the process. making sure that anybody's challenges are addressed in that process.

And is the waiting list the original? And have we updated it? Is it one that gets dropped, like our school waiting list? How does the waiting list work?

When we started doing this analysis, it was at 1,600. And within that time, it had grown another 100. So 1,700 is our latest count. The vendor said it'll take a month. for them to start processing everybody on the wheat list, to start giving them the bins, starting the service, sending them the starter kits, and then expand beyond that.

And have we taken anyone off the list when we pull bins from families who we know haven't been using it so we can stay at that original threshold?

That's a good question. I don't have an exact answer to that, but I can get back to you on that.

And do you feel as though we can expand successfully? Like, do we have... the tools in place to be successful? Not just we said we'd wait and we'll get to this list, so we have to, but we're prepared for that?

Yes, we do have an action plan of resolving the waitlist first as priority, but then we also have a projection from the vendor of how many more households they can add in the year. We have budgeted bins for that, so we should be able to expand beyond the waitlist.

And if you could just speak to the 20 is that still the number of the project Oscar bins across the city how they're doing and How they're getting emptied and all and are they staying clean and are they successful?

We see or ideal behaviors across Oscar bins. There's some neighborhoods. They want more of them They want more bins per location So we also do the same activity for Project Oscar, try and do as much outreach as possible, bus shelter stops, buses, MBDA, education, newsletters, outreach through ONS, all of these things we try to increase usage of an Oscar bin, but because we have capacity constraints as well on that side, sometimes we would take a bin that has not been performing too well over a very long period of time into a place where people are actively reaching out saying, we want more Oscar bin capacity in our neighborhood. So we've done- So we have.

We have moved when we saw the- Yes, yes.

So we have done that last year.

And can we speak to the food that we serve at community centers, senior centers, schools, how are they tied in? And do they also use a similar or an actual, say, Oscar bin too?

I believe that the schools are like 40 schools that have farm to table program that also has a combination of food waste, education, and separation. Exact number of how many are actually sending it to a food waste collection, I can get back to you on. I don't have it at the top of my head.

And do all of our BHA housing have compost? Not all of them. Do any of them? Some of them do, yes. And are those used? Or are they some of the lower used? Because I think that ties into the whole education piece also.

BHA ones are used. I think BHA has a separate compost program. But because they're like multi-unit apartment buildings, it fills up quickly. That's also another department I can get back to and understand just how much of the BHA bin then. Good question.

And one other question about these kind of public Oscar bins. Do we discourage or is it not allowed to say like have a restaurant or like a small coffee shop? Obviously not a big restaurant chain would use them, but are they allowed to drop off? Like is there any restriction on who fills them? Do we find some overflowing because certain businesses are using them or no?

We've not had a whole lot of illegal dumping on the Oscar bins, some of them. It is coded, so you need to have a code to access it, which is publicly available. If you really want it, you can. But we have not heard too many complaints about commercial entities using it. But we want to provide that access only to residents for now for the Oscar bin.

And one last, just curious, is there an issue large enough to be concerned that people misuse the green ones, thinking they're just small recycle bins? Because I have seen people putting the wrong things in and not realizing, even though it's obviously blue, green. But has that been a problem with those who are going around picking them up?

It is a little bit contaminated. We don't really get a lot of updates from our curbside vendor on contamination, also because it goes to an AD facility, which is able to handle all of this. But on the other hand, Project Oscar, for example, we get contamination reports all the time. There's a contamination fee built into our contract. So there is active education going on there that we are not going to pick up this load if it has only plastics in it. So that's the difference between compost and .

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Fitzgerald, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. And I couldn't help but chuckle during this hearing. My wife sent me a text and said, hey, by the way, the food waste is going to every two weeks, John. Just so you know, I said, so I'm hearing, babe. Literally while we're here. We are a participant in this, and we do have the green belt. But thank you for the communication, one. The email went out. It's working. It got to the guy who takes the trash out. So I know my role now. But I do think about now what this means, because we fill it up pretty good, right? You got three kids, there's a lot of peanut butter and jelly crust, and the night's dad cooks, most of it ends up in the bin, right? And so I'm trying to think of, I heard you say we could ask for a bigger bin. Is that any added cost, or is that just a request?

For now, no added cost for a bin.

Okay. And how much bigger is the bin from the small bucket that we have now?

Do you have the five-gallon?

It must be a five gallon, yeah.

So you can go up to 12.

12, okay, so over twice the size then. Okay, great. Just thinking about people's, where they store it, if there's enough space, et cetera. We don't do anything for the biodegradable bags, right? I believe families have to buy those personally, right? That's not part of the program. Yeah, okay, no, it's not, right. So, I feel like the biggest pain they'll just be remembering what week it is. Right. Um, and that's fine. I have the trash app and I'd be able to check that easily. And I think, um, for anyone listening, that's sort of like, if you don't have the trash app, get it. It helps big time with both, um, you know, leave leaves and other stuff take away as well as this now. Um, and I guess the other question I have is sort of a more overall thing. It's, it's, it's a, sort of a comedic joke that gets brought up all the time. I spend all the time separating everything. Does it actually matter, right? And does it go to the right place? It's not just food waste, but recycling in general, right? I've heard lately now, I mean, I know that we, I think as a country, used to sell it off to another country, to India or something like that, and they did stuff with it, but they might not be accepting it as much anymore, or not paying as much. I have no idea what I'm talking about right now. I'm looking for you guys to tell me. But so, are we actually still separate, I mean, from, and does it matter? A lot of people just go, it all goes to the same place anyway. How do we start to debunk that mindset?

I have a question. So if you're putting out trash, that's going to a waste energy plant, as has been discussed. If you're putting out your food waste, it is going either to a small mongrel composting facility, a large amount going to an anaerobic digestion facility. If you're putting out yard waste, that is going to a yard waste composting site, principally on American Legion Highway. If you're putting out your recyclables, that is going to a materials recovery facility in Charlestown. Behind your question, sort of like then what happens there once the recyclables get separated? And I think there, and you may already know this, if not, we can come back to you on sort of like here's the sort of aftermarket of the things that go to the site in Charlestown about where that actually goes.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I do want to, but I think it would be helpful, I think, to change people's mindset about that or to participate more if they knew where, all right, it just goes to here to get recycled, great, but what is the aftermath of it and say, okay, now I see what I'm contributing to, it might spur them more, yes. Don't hit the button at all.

Definitely agree there. If we had something more visual to see where it actually ends up going, it would help connect the dots in somebody's head. We went to the more facility. I don't know if you've visited that. We keep organizing tours. And it's very impressive to see how you can bring in mixed recycling load with plastics, packaging, glass, metal, bikes. We saw bikes on the conveyor belt get separated into clean streams of aluminum cans and plastic packaging. Glass gets crushed and reused. It does go, because it's a business. Those guys charge us for collection, but then pay us back for what they earn. So they're actually selling it when there is a market for it. So it definitely makes a difference. It's just that we don't see tangibly how it is getting used, which is why people feel like, you know, is it really worth it to do this? But it definitely gets used.

No, it's good. I just would say at a high level, because I think there's been a lot of commentary and press on recycling. At a high level, the waste streams that are still very good in terms of, you know, going to another product, paper is still easily recycled and separated, glass, metals, so all your aluminum cans, tin cans, like those are very successful circular, you know, waste streams. The one that has been a challenge has been plastics. And the triangle that people see on the bottom are like, oh, do you do a plastic number three or plastic number four? Like that was a challenge. And we can have a longer conversation about, you know, the greenwashing in the 1970s and the plastics industry. But some of those things are not as recyclable as one would hope. Yeah. But the core ones are like paper, metals and glass. Those are still, you know, very well used and separated out in our facilities.

I feel like plastics is the majority of people's recyclables these days. And if I think about what I put in. And that's a challenge.

And that's why when you're thinking about what you're buying in terms of, am I buying a bottle of something or a can of something, or a glass bottle of something, you want to think about that.

Gotcha. Last question I have is I know we talked about the hard part is placing these facilities when we want more of them. And we just had a hearing last week or two weeks ago about even just the trash over by New Market, Republic, and... Um, Roxbury Restore, I believe, right? Yeah. Uh, no. No, yeah, Republic and the other, there's the other one over there too, recycling. Um, and so, uh, where are we looking at in terms of, like, Is it dealing with the state and saying, hey, we've got to find something? I know you said it's, you know, what's the difference between trucking it 85 miles away and coming back versus the benefit we get from the actual recycling? Because I don't know there's a ton of space in the city anymore, right? So are we sort of restricted there and are we more going to rely on the state going forward? I guess I'll just simplify that.

So there was a study, Council Member, if you referenced Councilor Bach, that was, that Councilor Bach had really championed to look at potential sites. Councilor Fitzgerald, to your question. My recollection, and happy to sort of get the details of this to this body, is that there are not necessarily locations within the city of Boston that make sense from a composting perspective. It may be more transfer sites, or to go to multiple sites that are outside of the city, which is why I think working within our region or with the Commonwealth to think about what those locations are is something which is, I think, necessary for us to be able to expand this program in an affordable way. That's what I figured. Yeah.

Yeah. No. Thank you very much, guys.

Appreciate you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Sharon Durkan, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, Councillor Flynn, for hosting this hearing. I want to thank Councillor Claudia Zapata for filing this hearing and including me as a co-sponsor. I've long been an advocate for composting programs and for getting more of our residents involved in composting. And reading the memo from Garbage to Garden, it seems like one of the concerns of this program is just the cost per ton challenge. And it's really not, you know, as we're trying to get more people involved in this, in composting and trying to get more waste diverted from the garbage. I'm just curious how we think about that cost per ton challenge and how we think about building up density. I know there have already been some questions asked today about sort of the deal that we're making and the contract that we're making, and I support those changes. I think it's really important that we move towards making this more accessible for more people, even if that means picking up a little bit less. I know that I utilize the Project Oscar program and my freezer is constantly filled with I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do scraps and bits of carrots and bits of onions and I need to hit my project Oscar Ben soon. Some of my biggest accomplishments in our neighborhoods have been securing helping the West End residents secure their Project Oscar bin on Causeway Street. The Beacon Hill one has been a huge success and it is actually the fifth most used in the system. So we know that this works. Many residents of my district are dismayed about the six or fewer unit because that creates a system where basically the densest areas of Boston are not included in this program. And so that has been my initial advocacy. But realizing how expensive it is and realizing also that we had the opportunity through ARPA funds to create a facility and ended up just not being able to get that together, that was a big push by Councillor, the former Councillor from District, Councillor You know, we're all like living in reality. I guess my broadest question is if if it's not a coverage problem and it is a density problem and we're also Avoiding sort of these bigger unit buildings. How do we build in that density? You know because the densest parts of Boston are basically the ones that are excluded from this program There's that point I think

both my fellow panelists probably thought more about this. I think these two principal cost drivers are two ways in which we look at the cost. One is the density around collection, and the other is the capacity around disposal. The more that we can grow enrollees, the more efficient we are in a cost per collection, to exactly your point. This does give us the path to expand enrollment, even though it reduces the frequency of collection. So it is a path to be able to more in line to Chief Sweat's point of aligning with what we're seeing in other municipalities for frequency of collection. Hopefully that grows the numbers, lowers the cost per collection going forward. The second thing really is the cost for disposal. And that is where, that is about some of this regional collaboration, which to your point around Councillor Box, the study that she was looking for, that is still an important path for us to be able to lower the cost per ton.

Well, and we're at capacity at those sites that we are utilizing. So It's while we want more residents to be available, we want more residents to actually use this program. And we want, you know, and honestly, it's a little bit like it feels like a little feel good to let everyone compost their stuff. But when the actual facilities are at capacity, it's like how much good are we doing by allowing more people to access a program that doesn't have the capacity to actually use the waste that is being created?

So it's a great question, which is why it's a good opening to sort of talk about where this goes, and in particular for large multifamily buildings. And to Councillor Murphy's question on BHA housing, we ran a very successful pilot a number of years ago on adding incinerators into BHA housing to get food out of that waste stream. The 85% of the food waste that's collected curbside goes to the same place, the same end of use as if it was just ground up and sent to Deer Island in our waste stream. So one of the nearer term solutions while we work out sort of sector capacity is if you have an insinkerator, like grind up your food waste, you know, that is the same thing as putting it out on curbside waste. And that's an easier solution in multifamily buildings. You know, if they have that to sort of stress that those actually can handle that food waste, it's actually keeping it, you know, to use in Boston.

As you can imagine, my old Beacon Hill apartment doesn't have that.

It's not an option for everybody.

And if it did, I would ruin it with an artichoke because I've done that before.

You've got to cut up small, yes. And I know Boston Water Service Commission folks are saying, oh, don't. But it goes to that same end use. And then the energy and the power then offsets the cost of wastewater that we're paying for now.

Got it. Yeah. And I think Councillor Fitzgerald's point was so solid because we've all read sort of these like articles where it's like, you know, is my plastic ending up on a beach somewhere else? And like, I feel great about it. I felt great about the fact that I've separated my plastics. I actually started my high school's recycling program We called ourselves the Planeteers. We got my school on board with this. And I've been a lifelong recycling advocate or lifelong environmentalist, but Yet, where is everything going? And I think in Boston, we have really tried to divert our waste streams towards positive routes. I think one place where we haven't been able to get that done is actually when they mandated mattress recycling. More of our stuff ended up sort of, more of our mattresses actually ended up on ideal waste situation. I'm not sure how to phrase that, but essentially more of our mattresses are actually going to be, much of it is unusable and unrecyclable. So I support this program. I support the changes that are made. I want to thank the chair for his leadership on this as well. I think that it's really important that while we are moving towards expanding access here, we're also thinking about the cost, and we're also thinking about how much good is actually being done and how we're actually, I think as a city, we are trying to do everything right, and our residents are asking for more tools to do the right thing, but the question is how effective that is and how, and I think that the city has done a really good job, and I just want to shout out Jerry Gorman, Dennis Roach, and Danny Nee, who I work with every single day, who share very blatantly the realities of the decision-making. It's very easy to say, let's be green. Let's do this. Let's do all these things the correct way. But we have to ask, where are these waste streams going? How much CO2 is being taken out? And how are we doing that? So a spice of reality is always needed. And I want to thank those. those three for always giving us the real talk of what things are happening and how our contracts impact the broader environment. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Durkan. I'll also take six minutes as well. Thank you to the administration panel for the important work that you are doing. This is an issue that I have worked on since I started and have long supported this plan and expanding it as well. Chris, let me just ask, as you know, one of the neighborhoods I represent, and I spend a lot of time and effort there, Chinatown. Tell me specifically how you're doing in Chinatown on composting, what the progress is, and or the leather district as well.

So you may have the specific stats, if not, We may need to get back to you on that. I think one of the things, very similar to Councillor Durkan's comment, is because our curbside program is really for buildings that have six units or fewer, and there are a number of buildings in both those neighborhoods that may be above that, their composting may be more building specific than through our curbside program. Again, an opportunity for us to work with you and Councillor Durkan and others to think about what changes we might be able to make going forward to support those businesses. But you may have the enrollment numbers for Chinatown and for the other district.

Curbside, we don't have too many in Chinatown, but I can get back to you. We do have a Project Oscar in Chinatown. We've been speaking with the ONS liaison there to bring to their attention that this is something that the residents can use, creating language accesses, giving out flyers with local information to the residents in Chinatown.

So we don't have many participants in Chinatown. Is this something we are able to work on, expand, An issue that I've focused on and worked with Chris for years on is pest control. And it's a major problem in my district, but specifically in Chinatown. It's probably the densest community neighborhood in the city. And it probably has the most restaurants as well of any neighborhood in the city as it relates to the population. So factoring those, how do we expand the program with a keen focus on pest control challenges?

I think we're very willing to work with you and organizations across Chinatown around promotion now that we have the opportunity. Essentially come October to be able to re-expand the curbside program for any housing units that are eligible to think about what that looks like and then potentially work property by property. There may be a different set of conversations for the commercial or institutional facilities in Chinatown and the weather district. So happy to work with you on what that could look like.

Okay. Would it be if you lived in a large building in Chinatown and a lot of residents are living in these small apartments would it be each person would have their own bin that they would be responsible for bringing it down or would it be something more kind of community effort where people coordinate together in a particular building

So the current program is really scaled to buildings that are six units or fewer. And consequently, we should do some work. I'm happy to work with you on this, working with building management companies around what that could look like in some of the larger buildings that are above six units in size.

But in terms of availability for Project Oscar, I mean, they could organize to do Project Oscar drop offs by building. I mean, everybody's eligible. Residential is eligible for Project Oscar. OK. We could certainly look at what's the bin capacity in Chinatown of Project Oscar. Do you want to add a bin and market that specifically to say, are there constituents and residents that want to use that?

Could we try to do a meeting with the right community partners, community leaders? There's several that are specifically focused on pest control that are focused on cleaner streets. But could we kind of do a Zoom meeting and kind of listen to the residents, listen to you, and see how we can go forward on some recommendations before this is implemented in October? So maybe a Zoom over the next couple of weeks. Is that okay? Sure.

Absolutely happy to do that. And to Councillor Louis-Jean's point and to Chief Sweat's point, we can think about what are those additional Structures we can provide, whether it's Project Oscar or sort of advice or support for buildings.

Happy to do that. Okay. My priority as a city council is certainly my entire district, but my top priority is the residents of Chinatown. I do want to provide them with the best quality of life, the best neighborhood services. And I also think this is a public health issue as well. And maybe we have to get pest control, John Elric, involved in this as well. The other challenge, Chris, as you know, is for people in Chinatown, it's hard to have a barrel in your house or your apartment or your little walkway there. And in things we take for granted in my neighborhood or my house is a major challenge in other parts of my district. Is that something that you might have a recommendation or a plan on?

So that's a great thing to raise and I think very similar to the community meeting that you and Councillor Fitzgerald and Councillor Culpepper and I were in three nights ago. Happy to think about what containerization may look like or support in some of the neighborhoods where we're having a large trash barrel is simply not a real feasible option for a number of households. So happy to have that conversation. I think the conversation we started a few nights ago is a good path to identifying some new solutions.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. We are going to, I'm going to check to see if we have any public testimony or if there's any testimony from anyone here in the INL chamber, if you'd like to, testify please come on down if you didn't sign the document come on up anyway it's an opportunity to have your voice heard I don't think anyone here in the chamber is going to testify but okay no zoom links it's still an opportunity if you do want to testify but we don't have public testimony at this point I'm gonna go back to my Colleagues for further round of questioning probably go to three minutes and I I do want to ask one of my colleagues. Maybe council at Colette is about to Today is POW MIA day and I am speaking downstairs at the City Council Plaza in a couple minutes. I may have to leave early a few if you're able to fill in for me. Yeah, thank you. Okay, okay. At this time, I want to give three minutes to my City Council colleagues. I'm going to start with Councillor Cleta-Zavata. Councillor Cleta-Zavata, you have the floor.

Thank you, Council of Flint, and thank you for allowing us to continue while we have a very important event going on outside. I just want to shout out that my little one, my four-month-old is here. Joaquin is in the audience. We care very much about this issue. It's just a little reminder that the decisions we make today will impact the world that he inherits. So just really grateful that. could be here my my questions are more centered around the state there was a comment that was made by you chief and to the extent that you can talk about it but what have you heard from the state about the rules that they're going to promulgate in 2028 and how are we preparing for compliance how are we already there and then how are we planning for or just ensuring that edible food is recovered first. So tying in that food recovery aspect of it. As you know, I filed a food recovery ordinance that compels big box retailers and then soon after that small businesses to participate in a program like this. How are you considering that as we think about the rules that are coming down from the state in 2028? And then also what gaps in infrastructure or resources do we need to address now in order to be ready for 2028? Great.

um so i'll tackle some of that and then you can talk about the uh infrastructure um so i think so broadly you know the state is aware that there is a uh because we're not the only you know community obviously massachusetts doing curbside food waste collection with a a very significant portion of it ending up in anaerobic digestion So the state is very aware that there is this disconnect between supply and demand in the food waste collection industry in the sense that we would all like more of that to go to composting and then back on community gardens and people's agriculture. And that the supply of that as an industry sector is not ready to meet that demand. So I have not had specific conversations about their timeline and intent to move forward with those policies, but they are aware of, you know, if you create a mandate, yes, you're creating a market, but you need to give enough time for that market to then react and materialize. And the last thing you want to do is sort of close down, is create something that is impossible to deliver from an economic sector. And I think Councilor Durkan raised this as well. That's the challenge. When we went out to RFP a number of years ago on our curbside collection, we were optimistic that there were going to be compost facilities that were going to respond on that. They did not have the capacity to even handle 10% of Boston's food waste. So there is a significant challenge here. in the composting sector of sort of building up that capacity. So, you know, I have full faith that the state's not going to sort of move forward with a mandate that isn't deliverable, you know, from the waste sector perspective. On the, you know, how are we getting on the food recovery? And I totally appreciate that question. We still have a ton of perfectly nutritious, healthy, safe food coming into Boston, but for an inability to get it to people who need it, is going into the waste stream. And so we are still, I think you've been at the Newmarket facility a number of times with me, it's been phenomenally successful as a proof in concept. I would like to explore more of that and dealing with more large-scale providers of food, whether or not they're hotels. We've talked to some of the airlines. There's a lot of food going through East Boston that may not be getting on airplanes, and where is that going before the end of its useful life? Obviously, our convention centers. How do we make sure that perfectly good, nutritious, culturally appropriate food is getting into the neighborhoods before it's simply sent into the waste room? So I think there's a lot more work we can do there.

And I would just add colleges, universities. Yes, colleges, universities, kitchens.

Yeah, exactly. Yep. All of our institutions.

Great. Thank you so much. Again, thank you for your time and all of your work. I appreciate the opportunity to ask a second round, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Louis-Jean, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my colleagues asked two of my remaining questions. I really just have one. I believe, and it's about sort of how we're working in partnership with like, there are smaller organizations that do composting. There are smaller like community-based organizations, there are health initiatives. So how are we like also thinking about working with them? Do we work with them when we're thinking about expansion or what it would look like? I mean, thinking about Councilor Koleta Zapata's neighborhood of East Boston, they're so forward thinking when it comes to composting and greening our environment. So just, And I thought Joaquin was actually going to testify, but I guess he's still holding out. But, like, how are we working in partnership with them? What are we learning from them? Like, what does, yeah.

That's a great question. I'll just, I'll table set a bit, and then, Avanti, of course, you can come in. So one of the things we want to explore, and we've always talked like this is an interim solution for now, but we're, you know, we still want to iterate. There's scaling up and then there's downscaling. And clearly we're already too big for the industry in Massachusetts from a compost perspective. But can we provide a centralized waste pickup service that then goes to multiple end users? So could, you know, food waste in East Boston go to a different location than food waste in JP because, you know, there is a compost facility that's available and has the capacity to only handle neighborhood but not the city and we can still make that easy for people to put it in the green bin and once it's put in the green bin people don't really care exactly which compost facility is going to so one of the things we want to explore in the coming months is saying is there an opportunity to actually utilize more compost facilities at a smaller scale to sort of package this up and just to reinforce that point that actually sort of is similar to how we actually handle

trash and recycling today where collections is one set of contract and Management of the materials is a second and it could be a way by splitting those two that we can actually connect with contract with a variety a wider variety of Organizations around composting to your point. There's also some probably lessons learned that we can think from The many organizations that are already doing from perhaps on-site food waste composting That could be helpful to us as we think about how to scale the program further

Thank you. Actually, I do have one more question, and it's about the transition to the larger gallons of biweekly pickups. So I don't really experience this because, again, I freeze. But for those who aren't freezing, and I take it out the freezer on trash pickup day, What does it look like, I mean, there's smell, what are the potential downsides to the biweekly pickup when it comes to smell or rodent attraction or the growth of, if people are putting, I think about this especially in the summer months when it's hot and when others are, I know they're rodent resistant, but there are other not great things that happen as a result of having food outside for long periods of time.

The usual odors, fruit flies, if it's out too long, maggots, stuff like that can accumulate in your bin.

That's exactly what I said, maggots.

I didn't want to, yeah. Leachate could stay in there, would require cleaning after use, so there are those challenges associated with a very full bin, particularly when it's hot outside, and I think freezing right now is the best intervention that we have in keeping those, or maybe splitting it between two bins, having some more on your countertop bin, splitting it like that.

Yeah, I just don't want that. I don't want rodent activity increasing indoor for people, and I also don't want maggots or the other issues increasing outdoor. So I just want us to ensure that we're doing targeted education campaigns. And again, we look forward to working with you all in MediPen, where I think there's a lot of potential here to build upon the naturally organic pun there. but recycling and composting that happens in those communities. So, thank you.

Thank you. Council Murphy, you have the floor.

Question, if you are a participant in your moving, are you able to make sure you can bring it or if you're on a street or neighborhood that, how does that work?

If you're moving, you can access the customer service and tell them that, you know, we won't be using this bin anymore and they're able to pick up

No, but they don't want to give it up I'm asking can they continue to use it on their new street or if they're moving to an underserved? Neighborhood does that mean they have to stop using it?

Um if it's a good question if it is over six units Then that's something that means single family if it is within that then the vendor can probably just update your address Are there any streets or neighborhoods?

They don't pick up like was anyone not in? given one in the first round of the 10% because of certain neighborhoods that, or is every street available and we, like what is the 10% number?

The 10% is sort of what we are.

No, like what is the actual number?

Like 27,000.

So are the 27,000, the first 27,000, no matter where they live, just got pulled their names, their addresses?

So long as they were in a building that was six units or fewer.

Right, if they... checked off all the boxes to actually be kept on a list. Okay. Yeah. So there's no reason to think that if you moved and you're still in a single family that you won't be able to just thinking, cause I don't see any green bins out in my, there weren't any geographic restrictions when this program rolled out, it was just the size of the building that you're in.

And honestly, like, um, and that was, a policy decision to be equitable and say everybody's eligible and then eventually sort of is capped out so that the geographic distribution that you see now is based on people's initial responses until the scale of the program hit the cap that the contract could absorb. That is also like one of the reasons that this program from like a transportation perspective is inefficient because you'll have a truck going down the street and picking up one in one neighborhood and like the truck is spending an hour, you know, in traffic to go pick up that one.

Right. So I think that's one of the challenges. Yeah, it's tough. But at the same time, you don't want to discourage the one neighbor in the neighborhood, right? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councillor McQueen. Councillor Fitzgerald, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. Just a quick follow-up to that. But if we go to every other week and we allow the waiting list to come on to the books, then hopefully there isn't just one neighbor that should make some of the routes more efficient might add some routes i get to but might make that one trip a little bit better um yeah it's uh just want to commend you guys it's an important thing to take on it's not an easy one to take on or get people involved with completely but um thank you for all the work you do no further questions thank you thank you councillor durkan you have the floor

Thank you, Chair Flynn. I'm just hearing my colleagues' conversation. This has been really interesting, because if you were to work backwards from the capacity, you would not build a program like this. Essentially, if you were to work backwards to say, we have this much capacity, you wouldn't want a bunch of cars driving around the city of Boston picking up something that you know, to help the environment, you would say, Okay, let's just do Roslindale and JP, because we would get enough composting from there to fill up the capacity there is. And so I guess I have to ask myself, like, how much of this is to make people feel good about their contribution? You know, I know, I shouldn't be saying this, but At the same time, it's like we need to build the capacity because otherwise this program is not going to make sense for the future. And like the capacity of who is taking this and how it's being used. And I just want to say the garbage to garden folks are just incredible people and they are doing incredible work. and everyone at the city of Boston who's working on this is incredible. But if you're like a management consultant, you would be like, we can get enough banana peels from JP and Roslindale and we could fill up the amount of compost we need with the capacity that is there. And that's why Councillor Kenzie Bach was a genius and wanted to use our ARPA money for creating, you know, for creating a facility that would do this. Unfortunately, with the ARPA funds, we had to move really quickly and that just wasn't, it wasn't, there was no way that that would be cited and built in the time necessary. But, you know, there's a bunch of things I'm thinking about. being a city councilor, you realize there's all these niche industries that nobody's in, that everyone could be in. I think Chief Sweat and I have talked about the rat rodent ice. If you were trying to make money in the city of Boston, you'd be like, let's get in this rodent ice business, because apparently there aren't enough people making it. So there's a bunch of niche industries that I think could Solve a lot of our problems, but I just want to thank you all for all of your work I think this is not easy and and we probably wouldn't design it this way But we are we are servants to the people of Boston and they want compost and we're trying to deliver it for them as Efficiently as possible with the best set of vendors following all the procurement laws And so I think I just want to thank everyone who works on this I want to thank garbage to garden project Oscar has been a huge success in my district and I think

uh we just need more capacity and i think that's the takeaway that i've had from the now this is the second hearing we've had on this since i've been on the council so thank you all thank you chair yeah just uh to respond to that counselor i think you're spot on that we are um when we got started in 2014 with project oscar i was one of the skeptics that would bostonians actually be willing to separate a third you know, do a third thing in terms of waste separation and then go somewhere to put food into another waste stream. We have demonstrated that people are willing to do things in their homes, you know, in order to be good environmental stewards and bring food product back. But we're still very much in the pilot phase of scaling this up. And so I think I'm very optimistic that people continue to demonstrate they're willing to separate their waste into three different streams. We have not been able to scale, but this proof of concept of like chicken or the egg, we have to prove that there's a product there for then the industry to begin to grow. I think we're proven in Boston that people are willing to do this. We have lots of food waste that we could divert. Now, how do we get it out of the traditional waste stream? And we'll stay at this. We've only been at food waste recovery for 10 years. It took like 50 years to get the recycling rates that we have, you know, in Boston. And we still got to work on those. So, I think, I share your sort of, we wouldn't design this at scale, but, you know, from my perspective, we're still very much in the pilot and ramp up mode around food waste recovery.

Thank you. I will also take three minutes. Again, want to say thank you to the administration team that's here, Brian, Chris, especially want to say thank you to Avantika. Very professional, outstanding job that you're doing. I just want to acknowledge you and how hard you work as well. So I know we're in a pilot phase with the composting. How much do we spend roughly each year on composting?

Food waste curbside collection program essentially 2.7 million for this fiscal year and the project Oscar program is about $120,000. Okay, if it were to be expanded to every household in the city That would obviously go up significantly when it would I think this is where to come to Durkin's point You would both have the benefit of economies of scale around collection but you would run into the capacity challenges that exist within the Commonwealth around where it goes and unless we were to ship more of it to anaerobic digestion. So it's, yeah, we don't have a number for you of how much that would be.

Could it be as high as 8 to 10 million? Is that the range you're talking about, potentially talking about?

It would be hard to come up with a number right now. So we, our understanding is that adding more stops to the rule does not significantly change the dollar amount. But because we also offer bins, along with that, the bin cost is $30 a bin. That would be the cost that would continue to grow if we go from $27,000 to $40,000 to $70,000.

Okay. Along existing routes. I mean, that's also the challenge. As you saw the color-coded map, there are certain neighborhoods where we have plenty of existing routes. There are a lot of neighborhoods where we don't have any routes, and there's a cost to expand to new routes.

in how many trucks do we have composting trucks in the city that do these pickups nine collection nine okay and is that's a contracted that's contracted out correct okay and so so we have the traditional trash we have the recycling trash we have the composting trash Are there any cities that are looking at ways of, say you have three trucks doing three different things, but do you have any way of, I don't know if the word is consolidate or streamline it in such a way where you don't necessarily have three trucks, you could potentially have two trucks. I don't know, I'm just kind of thinking out loud.

We have heard from innovators in the industry of having a truck that commingles all So you just bag it differently color-coded bags the same truck collects that goes to a facility where the separation happens at the facility There is that we also had I think split body trucks for a while for recycling and trash But I'm not sure if many cities are still using those.

I think New York still has No, that's that's excellent So, I think we would we did two rounds of Questions and again want to say thank you to the Panel for being here. I want to say thank you to my City Council colleagues for bringing this forward councillor Carter Zapata councillor we Jen councillor Durkin So today's hearing dockets 0 7 7 3 is adjourned Thank you