Below is a list of food scraps and organic materials you can put into your Circle Compost buckets (note: we realize “compostables” is not a real word). If you think you have something compostable that is not on the below list, please contact us to see whether we can take it:
| Bread |
| Brown paper (brown paper grocery bags or other) |
| Chicken scraps including bones |
| Coffee grounds and paper filters |
| Corncobs |
| Cork (real bottle corks, not synthetic, and please break them up) |
| Dairy |
| Egg cartons (paper based, not plastic or styrofoam) |
| Eggshells |
| Fireplace ashes (wood ashes only, no charcoal or other ashes) |
| Fish scraps including bones |
| Flowers (not treated with chemical pesticides) |
| Fruit, vegetables (trimmings, scraps, pits, rotten ones) |
| Grass clippings |
| Hair and fur (not treated with any chemicals) |
| Hay and straw |
| Hops |
| Houseplants (dead plants, bouquets, no pesticides) |
| Leaves |
| Matches (after use) |
| Meat scraps including bones |
| Millet chaf |
| Mushroom stems and scraps |
| Newspaper (torn or shredded) |
| Nut shells |
| Olive pits |
| Paper napkins (soiled with food stains, no cleaning products) |
| Paper towels (no cleaning products) |
| Pasta |
| Pencil shavings |
| Pine needles |
| Pizza boxes (greasy ones are okay, but please rip them into small pieces) |
| Rice |
| Sawdust |
| Seafood scraps including shells |
| Seeds |
| Tea bags (paper ones, no staples) |
| Tobacco and rolling paper (no cigarette filters) |
| Tofu |
| Wood chips (no black walnut) |
| Wood shavings (no black walnut) |
| Wooden toothpicks |
| Yard trimmings < 0.5″ dia. (not treated with chemical pesticides) |
Compostable food containers: bagasse (sugarcane) plates and containers must be certified as “pfas free.” These types of containers look like this:
Egg cartons: if they are clean, please recycle them. If wet or soiled with organic materials, please rip them up and you can place them in your bucket.
Newspaper: please note that we can also take newspaper, but if your newspaper is clean, recycling it is also an option! If you do place soiled newspaper in your Circle Compost bucket, please be sure you remove the glossy paper inserts (please do not give us glossy paper!) and please separate it or tear it up rather than give us a fully folded newspaper. When newspaper goes into our piles still folded and in a bundle, it becomes like a block and does not fully break down!
Paper towels / napkins: please be sure they are only soiled with food or other organic waste. No chemicals or even soap.
Pizza boxes: we will take your greasy boxes! Please rip them up into pieces, though, and put those pieces into your bucket.
PLA or corn starch based “compostable” bags, cups, utensils, etc. that feel like plastic: at this time we do NOT accept these types of “compostable” bags, cups, utensils, packaging, etc. from households. It is too difficult to track all of the ingredients being used in these, and the largest composting site in Philadelphia will not accept them. If you are looking for something to line your compost bucket, brown paper bags work great – the free ones from grocery stores are a good option, or we sell them in 25 packs here. Feel free to double up your brown paper bags for extra bucket protection if you like, as these brown bags break down well in our piles.
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