All food scraps and certified compostable products can be put in your container. See our What to Compost page for guidance.

Yes! Evanston residents can opt out of the community program and pay a little more to have more flexible service options. Read more about premium residential service.

You want an easy, actionable way to combat climate change and make a positive difference in your loved ones’ futures. Diverting your food scraps from a landfill through composting both reduces the amount of methane your household is responsible for producing and recovers resources to enable the nutrients present in your food waste to become a natural fertilizer to regenerate our soil.

Our 5-gallon buckets have lids that seal tightly. Our 32-gallon totes are bagged and also have a lid. When the containers are closed, they do not smell. As it gets closer to your pickup day, you may notice that the contents smell when you open it. The odor dissipates soon after you’ve closed it up. If keeping your bucket or tote outside is an option, that would help. Some customers freeze some of their food scraps and place them in our collection containers on the swap-out day. Here are some ideas on how to set up compost collection in your kitchen. You may also see our blog post about managing your compost collection during the summer for additional tips and tricks.

Each spring, we offer 10 free gallons of finished compost to our customers at what we’ve named our Spring Finished Compost Gift-Back. We offer several different days for customers to bring their own containers, collect their compost, and have the opportunity to purchase more if they need more. We partner with our colleagues in the local composting and farming community to provide this gift for our customers. Learn more about finished compost gift-back.