EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Starting April 6, East Grand Rapids neighbors can toss food scraps like coffee grounds and apple cores into their yard waste bins alongside traditional yard waste.
The expanded composting program builds on a three-year pilot program that ended in 2025, where neighbors could drop off food scraps at a designated site, according to Doug La Fave, director of public works and deputy city manager.
"To meet our sustainability goals, we wanted to try to find a way to make it more easily accessible for residents to participate in alternatives for this program," La Fave said.
The city was able to expand the program without changing pickup routes, adding personnel or costs because it fits within the existing yard waste operation's capacity, La Fave said. The city typically processes between 16,000 and 25,000 cubic yards of material annually.
"We're already there," La Fave said. "We're able to look at a model where the cost was pretty negligible for us to provide the enhanced service."
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Accepted curbside items include fruits and vegetables, bread, grains, pasta, rice, coffee grounds, nuts and shells, and traditional yard waste like leaves, grass and twigs. Food scraps can be mixed with yard waste materials.
However, meat and dairy products must be taken to the public works drop-off site because different composting vendors handle different types of materials based on their processing capabilities.
"We have a different vendor that compost at our drop off site, and they're able to handle a lot more variety of items," La Fave said.
La Fave compared the program to recycling adoption decades ago, when East Grand Rapids became the only community to mandate curbside recycling by ordinance.
"Organics is kind of in that space where recycling probably was 20-30 years ago, to understand that there's alternatives to process that material that's more beneficial for the environment, rather than sending it to a landfill or waste energy facility," he said.
The drop-off site at the Public Works complex, accepts additional items including meat, fish, dairy, coffee filters, paper towels, napkins, tea bags, pizza boxes, paper containers, paper plates, shredded paper and small pieces of tape-free cardboard.
More information about accepted and prohibited items is available here.
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