Re: Medford Secures $200,000 in Grant Funding to Support its Zero Waste Initiatives
Gary Liss
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – November 13, 2025
Contact: Steve Smirti, Director of Communications (ssm...@medford-ma.gov), 781-393-2529
Medford Secures $200,000 in Grant Funding to Support its Zero Waste Initiatives
State grant will allow the City to purchase additional organics carts, furthering the City’s composting goals
Mayor Lungo-Koehn worked with Garbage to Garden, the City’s composting vendor, to collect food scraps from a Medford residence in March 2025.
(MEDFORD) — The City of Medford has secured a $200,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) to bolster its continued waste reduction efforts.
The grant award marks the second MassDEP grant supporting the City’s waste reduction goals. In 2024, MassDEP helped launch Medford’s residential weekly compost collection program with $105,000 to purchase curbside organics collection carts. The $200,000 Pay As You Throw (PAYT) grant supports the expansion of that program by allowing for the purchase of additional organics carts.
“This is a decisive step toward implementing our 2022 Climate Action & Adaptation Plan,” said Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. “We made a commitment to Zero Waste in that plan and are making it easier for Medford residents and businesses to reduce, reuse, and recycle materials to restore or renew value, eliminate waste, and decrease pollution. We are excited to be recognized and supported by MassDEP and appreciate their partnership as we continue to expand our Zero Waste initiatives, increase diversion, and reduce costs associated with trash disposal. It’s the right move for our residents and businesses, it’s the right move for the environment, and it’s the right move for our City’s future.”
Offered at no cost to eligible residents, Medford’s residential weekly curbside composting program began July 1, 2024. The program has since earned the City two awards. The first was from the National Recycling Coalition for Outstanding Elected Leader, honoring Mayor Lungo-Koehn’s leadership in supporting and promoting the program. The second was awarded in October 2025 from the Northeast Recycling Council for Outstanding Community, recognizing how important and impactful the program is to the Medford community. More than 8,000 of the 19,000 eligible households are enrolled after only 15 months.
“Medford is emerging as a leader both for our waste reduction vision and the participation of our residents in our programs” said Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development & Sustainability. “Helping our residents compost is the right thing to do when it comes to sustainability, but we are actually being proactive and practical. Medford residents who are preventing food waste from going in the trash are already saving taxpayer dollars by reducing the City’s trash disposal costs.”
MassDEP is considering expanding its food waste disposal ban to all Massachusetts residents by November 2030. In 2023, the MassDEP Organics Action Plan reported that food waste is the single largest category of the state's solid waste stream accounting for approximately 21.6 percent of trash, by weight. Food waste is one of the heaviest items in the trash. Composting food waste directly lowers trash disposal costs, which are also calculated by weight.
The origin of this effort is the Mayor’s 2022 Solid Waste Task Force. As the City’s 14-year municipal waste contract was coming to an end, the Task Force convened to identify the goals of Medford’s new collection system. The Task Force decided the new system should control collection costs for the City, residents, and businesses, prioritize fairness and transparency regarding eligibility for municipally-funded services, expand recycling and composting services, and move Medford toward Zero Waste.
“We had an opportunity to redesign our system,” remarked Tim McGivern, Commissioner of Public Works, about the work of the Solid Waste Task Force in guiding the City toward launching its residential weekly curbside composting program. “Removing food from the waste stream helps us economically in the long run. Food waste is heavy and trash disposal costs will continue to rise. Our new collection contracts guarantee that every scrap of food we compost—instead of waste—saves the City money. This is important for folks to understand as we move to modernize our collection programs.”
Building on that success, Medford is now preparing to streamline its trash collection system. This announcement marks the City’s commitment to launching a program that qualifies as a Massachusetts Pay As You Throw (PAYT) program for residents who receive municipal collection service. To date, 162 communities in Massachusetts—and more than 9,000 nationwide—have implemented PAYT programs, which is a common name for many different programs designed to create an incentive to reduce residential waste. While some communities use bag-based systems or variable cart sizes, Medford’s PAYT program will build upon the existing 64-gallon trash cart collection system, a feature of the program that is both convenient for residents and fiscally conservative. Discussed with City Council in July 2023 as a future evolution of Medford’s municipal collection program, the City now has a firm date for implementation.
As of July 1, 2027, residential 64-gallon trash carts will be collected every other week along with recycling at no charge. The new baseline for trash service will equate to 32-gallons per household per week, which meets MassDEP’s service volume threshold for a PAYT program and makes Medford eligible for the PAYT grant.
“By the time we get to PAYT, we want everyone on the weekly compost collection service,” McGivern said. “It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s what will make our PAYT program work for Medford residents. We’re here to help everyone with composting and recycling so when the trash collection changes, they’ll be ready.”
Come July 1, 2027, residents who will still need additional trash volume will continue to be able to purchase overflow bags, as well as be able to lease additional 64-gallon trash and 96-gallon recycling carts from WM. The contracted rates for additional carts will be about $12 per trash cart per month and about $6 per recycling cart per month when the PAYT program begins. Weekly composting will continue to be provided by Garbage to Garden at no additional charge.
“We know that most of what we throw away isn’t trash, most of it is compostable and recyclable,” McGivern said. “So we are changing the structure of Medford’s collection program to prioritize composting and recycling. By keeping food waste separate we will also keep our recyclables cleaner so that more of them will actually be recycled.”
Ten months into the City’s three new collection contracts, several key milestones have been reached. Over 35 percent of eligible households are enrolled in residential food waste compost collection, yard & leaf collection has increased 25 percent, and Medford’s Business Districts have transitioned from bags on the sidewalks to containers and private service.
With these changes, Medford is setting a model for sustainable waste management in Massachusetts showing how composting, recycling, and smart waste collection work together to protect the environment and reduce costs for residents.
For more information about Medford’s Zero Waste initiatives and how to enroll in the residential compost collection program visit: https://www.medfordma.org/for-residents/recycling.
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Steve Smirti
Director of Communications | Office of Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn
Medford City Hall
85 George P Hassett Dr, Medford, MA 02155
781-393-2529 (office)
Please note: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts considers most electronic communications to and from public employees to be public records and disclosable under the Massachusetts Public Records Law and its regulations. *Please consider the environment before printing this email.*
Please note: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts considers most electronic communications to and from public employees to be public records and disclosable under the Massachusetts Public Records Law and its regulations. *Please consider the environment before printing this email.*
Neil Seldman
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