Scraps to Soil: Top Cities for Composting in 2026
Where are U.S. cities trying to recycle organic waste — yard trimmings and food scraps — into “black gold” and energy?
As thousands of industry leaders head to Sacramento for the COMPOST2026 conference (Feb. 2–5), LawnStarter looked at the Top Cities for Composting in 2026.
Top 10 Cities for Composting in 2026
- San Diego
- New York
- Los Angeles
- Boston
- Santa Monica, California
- Orlando, Florida
- Austin, Texas
- Gainesville, Florida
- Minneapolis
- San Francisco
To come up with this ranking, we compared the 500 largest U.S. cities based on 11 total metrics, including access to both city-run and private composting services, average yard size, and policies driving compost access, like zero-waste initiatives.
Key Insights:
28 cities in our ranking have both municipal and private composting options for residents. This is the case for our top 5 cities, as well as cities like Washington, D.C. (No. 19), San Antonio (No. 25), and Raleigh, North Carolina (No. 60).
Residents of cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa (No. 45), Athens, Georgia (No. 48), and Knoxville, Tennessee (No. 110), enjoy access to both municipal and private composting programs and ample yard space for creating a compost pile at home.
Despite scoring in the bottom half of our ranking for a lack of composting access, cities like Birmingham, Alabama (No. 339), Colorado cities Westminster (No. 429) and Lakewood (No. 465), and Nampa, Idaho (No. 449), land among the top 100 cities for local interest in composting.
Read the full story, written by Sav Maive from LawnStarter, here! 2026 Top Composting Cities.
