How to compost in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI (WXIX) - The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) says up to 40% of food ends up in the landfill every year. One Tri-State group is working to make composting more accessible to Cincinnati residents.

Queen City Commons is a Cincinnati food scrap collection service. With the help of a grant program from the city of Cincinnati and USDA, they have placed over 30 residential drop-off compost bins all around the city.

“Oftentimes, people want to compost. They want to change their lifestyle habits to do better things for the planet. But maybe they live in a condo, or maybe they live in an apartment. Maybe they don’t have a yard,” Julia Marchese, a worker and owner at Queen City Commons, said. “So, being able to have this kind of infrastructure, these kinds of drop-off bins, allows people that live in this downtown area to still divert their food scraps from the landfill.”

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Marchese says that basically anything that is food that is not meat or dairy can be put in the bin. They also said there were more uncommon compostable items that they accept.

“The other things that we can take in the bins are things like house plants, cut flowers, paper towels, paper napkins, and other kinds of paper products like that,” Marchese said.

The program does not accept compostable plastics, like a cup you may grab from the coffee shop.

All the compost collected in the bins is kept local, serving as fertilizer for farms all around Cincinnati.

The program is free for people to join, and it is free for your first three months. After that, Marchese says it’s as low as $4 a month per household to continue composting at these bins.

To sign up for residential composting, visit the Queen City Commons website.

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