Recycling food waste curbside is the goal of a new pilot program launching next month in six communities across Oʻahu.
Residents will be able to discard their food scraps in the green compost bins collected every other week by the city’s Department of Environmental Services.
HPR spoke with department Director Roger Babcock to learn more. His department is holding workshops and meetings to explain the program, which begins on April 1.
The pilot starts with six communities — Waipahu, Nānākuli, Hawai‘i Kai, Mililani, Kailua and Kalihi — and is set to roll out across the rest of Oʻahu in October.
There are a few easy tricks to remember what kinds of food can be composted:
- Include the food. “Anything that’s food qualifies, unless it’s liquid,” Babcock explained. “So yogurt, not milk.”
- If it grows, it goes. In other words, plants, meat, and bones all qualify.
According to Babcock, food waste accounts for 180,000 tons of the total waste stream, and half of that food waste is residential.
“Anything we can divert out of that waste stream and get recycled instead is very positive,” he said. “We all have to live on this small island, and it's really hard to have a landfill, and so we really need to work all together on recycling.”
The city just last year began recycling electronic waste like computers and cables at convenience centers across the island. Babcock expects paperboard could go in the blue bins for recycling within the year.
Babcock estimates that the new food waste program will cost about $18 million to $20 million annually to operate and says that there will be no added cost to residents.
The next workshops for the compost pilot program will be held on Thursday in Nānākuli and on Friday in Waipahu. Workshop attendees can obtain free green buckets and bags to store their food waste. Apartments and condominiums will not be included in the program at this time; residents there can drop off food scraps at Hawaiian Earth Recycling in Wahiawā.
More information can be found on the city website at honolulu.gov/env/grow.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 17, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
