The Great Backyard
Compost Challenge
DATA SUMMARY
The Great Backyard Composting Challenge: A Citizen-Science Study
How much food waste can local households divert to backyard composters, if given the opportunity?
This is the fourth year of our study. In 2021, 62 households from Buena Vista, Lexington, and Rockbridge County participated in a 12-week pilot study, with a 98% completion rate. In the spring of 2022, we built on that good work and enrolled 80+ additional non-composting households. Each cohort diverted more than two tons of food waste from the landfill. In 2023, 98% of participant households completed the study and planned to keep composting after the study. That's a big impact!
For this Spring 2024 Challenge, we will again introduce 80+ households to the wonderful world of composting. These participants will follow the same successful protocol as years previous. Each week they will report the weight of all food scraps they diverted to their composters, and we’ll report the totals here.
Last year our participants diverted a whopping 3,866 pounds of food waste. Let’s see how much we can keep out of our landfill this year!