Near Chicago, composting is a "no-brainer" as greener way to dispose of food waste

BERWYN, Ill. (CBS) – While it may look like garbage, composting is the process of recycling organic materials to fight food waste.

If everyone in the U.S. composted, it would be like removing almost 8 million cars from the road. CBS News Chicago's Climate Watch team found only about 15% of Cook County municipalities have any kind of compost program.

The team spent time tracking the entire process from start to finish, where one of the largest local programs just got off the ground in Berwyn. Berwyn is the 12th largest municipality in Cook County, and it just began offering eco-friendly weekly composting pickups.

Homeowners like Susan Klinger were happy to hear the news.

"I was so excited when Berwyn said they were going to start a program," said Susan Klinger, who moved to Berwyn a year ago and used to compost where she lived before. "It's kind of recycling on the food level."

Klinger signed up for a 35-gallon composting bin and got back into the swing of going green.

"I do tend to cook from scratch a lot, so I do have more composting," she said.

Klinger now throws food scraps, as well as paper towels, and other organic materials into her bin.

"There are eggshells in there, avocado rinds, seeds, apple cores—pretty much anything from your refrigerator," she said. "It really decreased the amount of garbage that we had. You realize most of our waste was compost waste."

Every three days, Klinger tosses her small composting bucket filled with food scraps into the composting bin. It is picked up every week by Berwyn's new waste hauler, SBC Waste Solutions.

"When you keep stuff out of the landfill, you're saving on emissions… you're saving on polluting the ozone," said SBC President Shawn Flood. "This material all goes into the ground, back into our Earth."

The environmental impact of composting

 According to research published in Environmental Health Insights in October 2022, nearly 500 billion pounds of trash are sent to landfills each year. About one-third of that waste is compostable.

"The state believes there's about 2.8 million tons of food scrap going to the landfills in Illinois," said Charlie Murphy, who is on the board of the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition.

Murphy owns Midwest Compost. He says he has expanded his business over the past six years as the climate has become a much bigger concern for consumers.

"Our permit began as a landscape wast-only facility, and then I was able to expand that into landscape waste and comingled food scraps."

The food waste picked up by waste haulers is dropped off at one of Murphy's facilities. The material is then ground up and laid out in rows. 

"That's turned over for a period of 90 to 100 days," said Murphy. "During that process, the heat that it generates will break down that material when it will look like basically black dirt."

Environmental researchers estimate that if composting rose by 18% by 2030 in the United States, carbon emissions could be reduced by 30 million tons a year and save $16 billion in municipal waste management costs.

At the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, researchers say if everyone in the U.S. composted, it would have the equivalent environmental impact of removing nearly eight million cars from the road.

According to the experts at IU and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the black dirt created from composting can help regular soil hold 2.5 times more water. That means plants can stay hydrated longer, and the soil won't erode as easily, leading to less flooding and pollutant runoff.

"If everybody just did a little bit, all those combined make a huge impact," said Klinger.

Berwyn's new program and others

Berwyn's new composting program got off the ground last April.

"We're always looking to see what we can do to minimize our footprint on the planet, and one of the easiest ways to do it was offering this program," said City Administrator Ruth Siaba Green.

The program runs in the spring, summer and fall from April 1 to January 1.

It costs $199 for the season.

"You can partner with a neighbor and share that yearly cost," Green said.

The City of Chicago began a Community Composting Pilot Program in six neighborhoods in 2023. It also offers a free Food Scrap Drop-Off Program at 17 additional locations citywide. Unlike in Berwyn, Chicago does not accept certain paper items for composting.