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Bowling Green testing residential food waste drop-off program

Bowling Green is teaming up with GoZERO, who will take the waste to their facilities and turn it into a compost mixture.

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — To help reduce the amount of food waste being sent to landfills, the City of Bowling Green is launching a six-month pilot program for residential food waste drop-off.

Bowling Green is teaming up with GoZERO, putting 64-gallon containers behind the Public Works Garage, near BGSU's airport.

The only thing Bowling Green residents need to do is collect all your food waste in an empty container, head over here to one of these green bins and dump it out. 

The sustainability coordinator with the city of BG, Amanda Gamby, says GoZERO will come and empty these bins about every other week.

"GoZERO will take it to their compost facilities and they will turn it into a compost mixture that can then be purchased for a top soil additive or any other landscaping or garden purpose," said Gamby.

When it comes to what of food you can drop off, Gamby says really any kind of food.

"A lot of our residents have been really surprised to hear that they can put bones or even raw meat in their bucket to bring out here, so it's a pretty expansive list."

It's just a six-month pilot program right now, but to keep it going after that point, Gamby says the city will be looking at how much the site is being used, how the site is being treated and making sure there are no contamination issues or illegal dumping. 

Gamby added, "then there's you know some folks that are a little bit skeptical it's going to smell really bad or it's going to attract all kinds of critters so we're just going to be keeping an eye on those sorts of things and just watching overall how it's received."

The pilot program is free for residents right now and the goal is to keep it that way. Bowling Green is also offering free buckets for folks to collect their waste.

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