Using Federal Grant, Fort Worth Seeks To Triple Number Of Residents Composting Food Scraps

Arlington TX

27 February, 2022

7:14 PM

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By Haley Samsel, Fort Worth Report February 26, 2022 When Fort Worth's residential composting program first launched in April 2019, city staff weren't sure if they would find 1,000 people who wanted to collect food scraps and drop them off at a collection site each week. Within three months, the team had to order more composting starter kits to meet demand, said Flavia Paulino, a marketing analyst for Fort Worth's code compliance department and the solid waste services division. "I had faith that out of 900,000 people that live in Fort Worth, at least 1,000 households could be interested in fighting food waste," Paulino said. "In the beginning, we were assembling starter kits manually, and the subscriptions were coming faster than we could put kits together." Nearly three years later, more than 1,600 households – out of about 297,500 in Fort Worth – have received small buckets to collect their food scraps, including fruits, vegetables, coffee grounds, eggs and cooked meats. That interest was generated almost completely by word of mouth, Paulino said, since the city never launched a marketing campaign to advertise the pilot program. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.