Foods cooked or dressed in oil are fine, but pouring used cooking oil in is not
No plastics or bioplastics
Compostable plastics are theoretically compostable but we don’t have the necessary infrastructure to do so
Biodegradable plastics are greenwashed petroplastics.
No paper products with plastic lining (such as coffee cups, to-go boxes, etc)
Best Practices (Back of House)
Train all staff on the basic dos and don’ts of our composting service. Repeat these trainings periodically, both for new hires and as a refresher.
Create quick-reference signage, highlighting any trouble items in your kitchen. We can supply generic signage, but custom signage focused on your in-house inventory can be more helpful.
For produce purchased with stickers, rubber bands or twist ties, create a process for removing those items BEFORE food prep begins.
Best Practices (Front of House)
Never set a compost bin out by itself anywhere that customers can access — it WILL be used as a trash can. Always create “sorting stations” by clustering containers for compost, recyclables and trash in one tight arrangement, to make it easy for customers to self-sort.
Instead of setting out our 64 gallon roll-carts, consider using smaller containers (23 gallons or less) for public-facing collection points. This gives your crew an opportunity to screen the smaller container for non-compostable contamination each time they consolidate it into the roll-cart.
Also consider taking this a step further with a pre-sort system, such as smaller tubs atop the bins, so contaminants are intercepted before they disappear from easy view.
Designate someone on your team to be the compost monitor, keeping an eye on patrons’ use of the compost bin and screening the contents before it is collected.
Let your customers know that we no longer accept compostable plastic. Any compostable plastic items will now need to be thrown away and not put in your compost bin.
