This story has been updated.

AVONDALE ESTATES, Ga. — Avondale Estates’ free composting pilot program has officially come to a close with a total of 136,415 pounds of food being diverted away from the DeKalb County landfill.

The 12-month pilot offered residents a compost bin for food scraps, with weekly pickup at no cost. The program began in August 2024 and was initially planned to run through August 2025, but a federal funding freeze halted it for three months in April. The program resumed in July.

 Avondale Estates, DeKalb County Commissioner Ted Terry, and CompostNow, which provides the composting service, announced the program’s return for the full duration during a July webinar.

The city received $323,800 in 2024 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Composting and Food Waste Reduction cooperative agreement for the pilot program. The program’s funding provided households with a 7-gallon food scrap bin, serviced weekly by CompostNow.

“It was something that we had been looking at on a county scale here in DeKalb, but we said this was an opportunity for us to pilot a curbside program, where it’s basically a third bin,” Terry said. “This was one part, how do we reduce our waste because it’s good for our climate, but No.2, how do we divert more of this food waste from the landfill so it lessens the impact on those emissions.”

He added that a compost program could generate revenue, as in Athens-Clarke County.

According to a news release from Terry, 544 residents participated in the program, and 33 percent are continuing to use a paid version of CompostNow following their experience. Over 14,000 pounds of methane were also kept from entering the atmosphere.

CompostNow was excited to relaunch the program over the summer and hopes to expand composting to a wider area.

“We have to think about better ways to manage our waste,” Terry said. “We only have one landfill in DeKalb County. It is a vital asset to the county, but we also have to recognize that a lot of people live near the landfill.”

The program now enters its next phase: compost delivery. The compost collected will be delivered to Black, Indigenous, and people of color farmers in DeKalb County and public libraries that feature a climate-resilient landscape, including the Clarkston and Chamblee libraries.

DeKalb County is also in the process of developing a master plan for the Pole Bridge wastewater treatment facility, and Terry hopes it will include building a county-run compost facility.

Assistant Editor Zoe Seiler contributed to this article.

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