Green carts that can be filled with fruit scraps, pizza boxes, chicken bones, cotton balls and other compostable waste began hitting the curb in Minneapolis on Monday morning.
The city began rolling out the first phase of its new organics pickup service with a small press conference in a northeast Minneapolis alley, where a homeowner carried out a banana peel on a glass serving tray and dumped it into her new organics cart. Hers was the first of about 7,000 households that will receive their carts over the next month in neighborhoods that were tapped to be among the first to try the service.
A second phase of the program is set to begin in the rest of the city in March. So far, more than 31,000 households have signed up to participate in curbside pickup.