Food scrap drop-off reaches 40 sites, half at libraries. A 2025 ordinance stops landlords and condo boards from banning it

Streets and Sanitation added bins at eight more library branches. The Council voted 49-0 last year to let residents collect scraps for drop-off even where building rules say no.

By Chicago PoliticsUpdated Nov 3, 2026

The City's free food scrap drop-off program now has 40 sites, after the Department of Streets and Sanitation added bins at eight more Chicago Public Library branches, Block Club Chicago reported Monday. Twenty-one of the sites are now at libraries.

Why it matters: food scraps sent to a landfill produce methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide, a Streets and Sanitation official told Block Club. The bins take meat, fish bones, dairy and cooked food, which the City says home composting generally can't handle.

The new sites

Block Club listed the eight new library drop-offs:

Thurgood Marshall, 7506 S. Racine Ave. (replacing the drop-off at 1756 W. 74th St., so the net gain is seven sites)
Humboldt Park, 1605 N. Troy St.
Blackstone, 4904 S. Lake Park Ave.
Merlo, 644 W. Belmont Ave.
Sulzer, 4455 N. Lincoln Ave.
Near North, 310 W. Division St.
South Chicago, 9055 S. Houston Ave.
Legler, 115 S. Pulaski Road

By our ward map, they are in the 17th, 26th, 4th, 44th, 47th, 2nd, 10th and 28th wards. The program started with 15 sites in October 2023 and has diverted about 2.4 million pounds of waste, according to the department. More than 9,500 households have signed up, toward a goal of 10,000 by the end of the year. Signing up on the City's program page is free and not required. The scraps go to a commercial composting site in Des Plaines, where they take about 45 to 90 days to become compost.

The department is considering Lincoln Park and downtown for future sites, where residents have asked for them, Deputy Commissioner Chris Sauve told Block Club.

What our records add

The Council protected the right to use these bins. In September 2025, the Council passed SO2025-0018160, sponsored by Ald. Matt Martin (47th) with Alds. Ruth Cruz (30th), Maria Hadden (49th), Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez (33rd) and Andre Vasquez Jr. (40th). The vote was 49 to 0, with Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) absent, at the Sept. 25, 2025 meeting.

How each ward voted

49 yea, 1 absent · Sep 25, 2025 · Passed

Yea Nay Absent

SO2025-0018160: the roll call, the timeline and the documents

Under the ordinance, a condo or homeowners association, landlord or other owner can't ban or unreasonably restrict a resident from:

collecting food scraps to drop off at a composting facility, or
hiring a licensed private company to collect and compost them.

The scraps have to be kept in a fully enclosed container with no opening wider than a quarter-inch, handled so they don't cause unreasonable odors or draw pests. A resident whose building blocks them can go to court to ask a judge to stop it.

Downtown has come up at budget hearings. At the Oct. 29 hearing on the Streets and Sanitation budget, Ald. Bill Conway (34th) proposed a downtown recycling center (watch). Downtown is one of the areas the department now says it is considering for compost drop-off.

What's next

Block Club said the department plans more sites, with a goal of offering compost drop-off in all 77 community areas.
The Council is reviewing the department's 2027 budget as part of the Mayor's spending plan, which must pass by Dec. 31.