Composting on a Budget

So you’d love to try composting, but you’re having trouble fitting a composting service into your monthly expenses? There are two great options!

“We want participation at the 20 Food Scrap Drop-Off Sites to be as barrier-free as possible, so there is no charge,” says Chris Sauve, Deputy Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, about the city’s new Food Scrap Drop-Off Program. Simply sign up, and it’s yours to use for free.

“The program launched October of 2023,” Sauve adds. “We currently have 7,000 participants, and as of June 2025, 422 tons of food waste have been collected and composted.” For a program that hasn’t even turned two yet, that’s a significant accomplishment. What’s the key to making the city’s new food scrap program a success?

Other than affordability, it’s educating people about composting. “The residents who sign up for a Food Scrap Drop-Off site do so on our website where we have pictures, a video and FAQs to help guide them on composting,” Sauve says. “We also occasionally send emails to participants to let them know of any updates, concerns and impact.”

Contamination—with plastics, for example—is a consistent problem with composting. In order to keep the food scrap stream clean, the city doesn’t allow plastics of any kind—even compostable plastics—and doesn’t allow paper or paper products like napkins either. Some of these products can contain synthetic materials that might not be easily recognized. “So far, there has been very little contamination,” Sauve reports. He encourages residents to use the city's resources to learn how to compost the right way.

Feeling a little bit more adventurous about composting? Another budget-friendly composting method is DIY—with worms!

For a nominal start-up cost, you can buy a worm bin and a bag of worms (literally a bag of little red wiggler worms will be mailed to you and show up on your doorstep). Worms turn your food scraps into nutrient-rich soil right in your own home, and Internet-favorite Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm has everything you need to get started.

Learning how these amazing systems work, whether we are taking advantage of Chicago’s program or creating our own worm ecosystem at home, opens up a whole new world for us to see the value in the materials we have been conditioned to “throw away,” and never send food waste to the landfill again.