Love Food Not Waste

Eugene residents pack an astonishing 40 million pounds of food waste into a landfill each year, but we’re looking to reduce that number. Love Food Not Waste® was established in 2011 and more than 200 local businesses (including many of your favorite restaurants) have signed on to hand their food scraps over to us as part of the Love Food Not Waste® program. This is possible through a joint effort by the City of Eugene, trash haulers, compost producers (Rexius), and food-related local businesses to turn food waste into useful and valuable compost instead of a stinking refuse pile. This program has diverted over 20,000 tons of food waste into compost since starting 12 years ago.

It takes just two months to turn Eugene’s food waste into our nutrient-rich Love Food Not Waste® compost blend, which is available for purchase at local retailers (Down To Earth, BiMart, BRING, and the Rexius Retail Yard).

The Love Food Not Waste® program was recently expanded to include residential food waste in the neighborhoods of Friendly, Harlow, South University, and Bethel.

“We are currently doing a curbside food waste collection pilot program [that is] running in about 1,500 households in Eugene,” said the City of Eugene’s Waste Prevention and Green Building (WPGB) department via Facebook. “We hope that by running this test program, we can make a program that will work for all Eugene residents. It has been going really well so far, so please stay tuned!”

The benefits of using compost in your garden are extensive — from better soil structure and moisture retention to healthier plants and, of course, scaled-down food waste.