Michelle Horneff-Cohen
Every April, Earth Day brings a familiar message: reduce waste, compost more, do your part. And to be fair, it works at least on the surface. Awareness goes up. Conversations happen. People become more intentional, if only for a moment, about what they throw away. But then something predictable happens. The momentum fades. The compost bin sits unused. Food scraps find their way back into the landfill.
Not because people don’t care. And not because they don’t understand what to do. But because the system they’re being asked to participate in doesn’t fully account for how they actually live. That’s the part Earth Day gets wrong.
If composting were simply a knowledge issue, we would have solved it by now. Most households already know the basics. They’ve seen the guides, read the lists, and understand that food scraps can and should be diverted from landfills and turned into something beneficial. Municipal programs have expanded. Infrastructure has improved. Messaging is everywhere.
And yet, participation remains inconsistent. Contamination persists. Drop-off rates fluctuate. The gap between intention and action is still there. The industry has responded the way it always does, more education, more outreach, more reminders about what goes where. But what if the issue isn’t what people know? What if it’s what they experience?
The Step We Keep Overlooking
Composting is often framed as a system that begins at the curb or in the backyard. Bins, carts, and collection schedules define the process. But in reality, composting begins much earlier. It begins on the kitchen counter.
That’s where food waste is generated, throughout the day, in small, inconsistent moments. A banana peel here. Coffee grounds there. Vegetable trimmings during dinner prep. Leftovers scraped from a plate after a long day.
These aren’t big, deliberate actions. They’re routine. Habitual. Easy to overlook. And that’s exactly why they matter. Because if capturing those moments feels inconvenient, even slightly, they won’t happen.
Friction Is the Real Barrier
The challenge with composting isn’t that it’s difficult in theory. It’s that it introduces friction into routines that are otherwise effortless. Throwing something in the trash is immediate. It’s familiar. It requires no additional thought. Composting, on the other hand, often asks for more.
More steps. More handling. More maintenance. A container that needs to be cleaned. A liner that needs to be replaced. Odor that needs to be managed. A sometimes icky process that doesn’t quite fit into the rhythm of the kitchen.
Individually, these may seem minor. Collectively, they’re enough to break consistency. And once consistency breaks, participation follows.
Infrastructure Can’t Solve a Behavior Problem
Municipalities have made significant investments in composting infrastructure, and rightly so. Collection programs, processing facilities, and policy mandates are all essential pieces of the system. Without them, large-scale diversion wouldn’t be possible.
But infrastructure alone doesn’t guarantee participation. You can provide every household with a bin. You can establish reliable pickup. You can enforce compliance through policy.
None of that ensures that food scraps actually make it out of the kitchen. Because infrastructure operates at the system level. Participation happens at the human level. And the two don’t always align.
Design the Missing Link
This is where the conversation needs to shift. Not toward more awareness. Not toward stricter enforcement. But toward design.
Not design in the aesthetic sense, but in the functional, everyday sense. The kind that considers how people move through their routines, what they tolerate, and what they avoid. The most effective systems aren’t the ones that demand behavior change. They’re the ones that quietly support it.
They reduce friction instead of adding to it. They fit into existing habits instead of trying to replace them. They make the right action the easiest one. In composting, that means rethinking the experience at the point where it actually begins.
The Kitchen Is the System
It’s easy to think of composting as something that happens outside at the curb, in a bin, or at a facility. But the reality is simpler. If the process doesn’t work in the kitchen, it doesn’t work at all. Because that’s where the decision is made, not once, but repeatedly, throughout the day:
- Do I separate this or not?
- Do I deal with this now or later?
- Is this easy, or is it a hassle?
These decisions don’t feel significant in the moment. But over time, they define participation. And participation is what determines whether composting programs succeed or struggle.
Rethinking the Goal
Earth Day does an excellent job of reminding people why composting matters. But it often stops there. It assumes that awareness naturally leads to action, that once people understand the environmental impact, they will adjust their behavior accordingly. Sometimes they do. Often, they don’t.
Not because they’re unwilling, but because the system hasn’t been designed with their reality in mind. If the goal is to increase participation, then the focus needs to shift, from educating people about composting to making composting easier to actually do. That’s a very different challenge. And it requires a different kind of thinking. Earth Day doesn’t need more messaging. It needs more honesty.
Honesty about where systems fall short. About why good intentions don’t always translate into action. About the small, everyday barriers that prevent people from doing what they already know is right. Because once those barriers are acknowledged, they can be addressed. And when they’re addressed, participation doesn’t have to be forced. It becomes natural.
A Different Way Forward
The future of composting won’t be defined by how many people are told to do it. It will be defined by how many people can do it consistently, without thinking twice.
That shift won’t come from bigger campaigns or better slogans. It will come from better systems. Systems that recognize that composting doesn’t start at the curb.
It starts at the counter. And if that first step works, if it fits seamlessly into everyday life, everything that follows becomes easier:
- Collection improves.
- Contamination drops.
- Participation grows.
Not because people were convinced, but because the system finally made sense.
Earth Day has always been about possibility, the idea that small actions, taken collectively, can create meaningful change. That idea still holds. But for composting to truly scale, those small actions have to be realistic. They have to fit into daily life, not sit outside of it.
Because the most important step in composting isn’t the one at the curb. It’s the one that happens long before that quietly, repeatedly, in the kitchen. And until that step works, the rest of the system never fully will.