What is Project Oscar?

Oscar (440)

What?

Project Oscar is Boston’s first 24-hour community compost program. Named after the Sesame Street character, the Oscar compost bins provide members of the community with a place to drop off food waste and participate in an environmentally-friendly form of waste disposal.

Where?

Boston currently has six community compost bins!

  • East Boston, on the Lewis Mall across from Maverick Station MBTA stop
  • North End, in the Nazzaro Center parking lot on North Bennet Street
  • Brighton, at Faneuil Gardens Apartments in the west parking lot across from McKinney Playground
  • Dorchester, on Grove Hall Plaza off of Blue Hill Avenue
  • Jamaica Plain, in the parking lot of the Curtis Hall Community Center at 20 South Street
  • City Hall Plaza, on Fisher Park near the Bill Russell Statue and food truck vending area

Who?

These bins are available to anyone who works or lives in these neighborhoods. We ask participants to complete a brief, educational composting quiz just to make sure everyone using the bin knows what can and can’t be composted. We request that you include an email (we will ask for it at the end of the quiz) where we can reach you to collect survey information or get in touch if we need to communicate new information about the bins. All bins are unlocked and open to the public for use at any time.

After a successful two-site pilot phase of Project Oscar in 2014, the City has scaled up and added three new locations opening in October 2015. As this is an ongoing pilot program, the data we collect from our participants will help up improve and grow the project even more in the future. We promise we won’t share your email address with anyone else!

When?

The bins are accessible all day, every day throughout the year - even in the winter, as long as they can be accessed each week to be emptied! Come drop off your food scraps on your way to or from work or whenever it's most convenient for you.

Why?

There are so many great reasons to compost! Here are just a few:

  • Regularly removing organic waste from your kitchen by dropping it in a compost bin 2-3 times a week significantly reduces odors in your home and prevents your trash from attracting unwanted pests.
  • When food waste is sent to landfills it produces high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is produced by anaerobic decomposition. When food waste is composted, the aerobic conditions in which it is broken down prevent the production of methane. By composting, we are helping to maintain a healthier atmosphere.
  • When our fruits, vegetables and grains are harvested from the field, they take a lot of the soil’s nutrients with them. By composting our food scraps we are returning many of these valuable nutrients (like nitrogen) back to the soil to support the growth of another generation of food. We call this “closing the loop” and it means that farmers who spread compost on their fields require less chemical fertilizer to grow their crops. Additionally, compost helps the soil retain more water and more nutrients and helps prevent soil erosion which is a major contributor to water pollution and soil degradation.

How?

Save your food scraps in a bucket, bag, or yogurt container until you’re ready to drop them off. Take them to your local Oscar bin whenever you like – they’re open 24-hours a day, every day of the week.

  • Pro Tip #1: You can store them in a bag or container in your freezer to reduce odors if you’re unable to drop them off for a few days.

  • Pro Tip #2: Line your bucket or bin with a compostable bag (available at many grocery stores and pharmacies) so that when you’re ready to drop off, you can just drop in the whole bag. This keeps your bucket at home nice and clean, too!

What Can I Compost?

  • Fruit and vegetable scraps, peelings, pits, and seeds
  • Eggshells and nutshells
  • Rice/pasta/cereal
  • Bread/pastries/cookies
  • Coffee grounds and coffee filters
  • Teabags
  • Cut or dry flowers
  • Napkins/paper towels
  • Paper plates
  • Cardboard take-out containers
  • Wine corks
  • Wooden coffee stirrers
  • Compostable plastics
  • Compostable bags

These Items CANNOT go in our bins:

  • Meat/fish/bones
  • Dairy products
  • Cheese
  • Fats/grease/oils
  • Pet waste
  • Charcoal
  • Yard waste
  • Cigarette butts
  • Dryer lint/dryer sheets
  • Styrofoam
  • Plastic bags

2014 Participant Survey Results

At the end of Project Oscar’s first year we surveyed our participants and here’s what you told us!

  • 65% of those who answered our survey said they knew the basics of composting before joining in the program but 84% were not composting until Project Oscar arrived in their neighborhood.
  • 65% of respondents made trips to the bins at least once or twice a week.
  • 93% of those who responded said they would continue to participate in the program if it continued and that they would recommend it to their family and friends!
  • When asked to describe their motivation for using the program, 80% of respondents told us that they generally wanted to be less wasteful and 64% listed climate change as a motivating factor.
  • We had a lot of comments about the difficulty of using the locking mechanism – unfortunately the locks did not hold up well against the elements. We’re in the process of finding new bins that will hold up better through our rainy, snowy weather.
  • We heard overwhelming support for the program – many participants would like to see this project expand into other neighborhoods. The City of Boston is working hard on a plan for scaling up the program so that many more Bostonians will have access to community compost bins. We’ll let you know as soon as more sites become available!

If you have any other questions please email us at oscar@boston.gov or call us (617)635-1392.