Green bins clog Los Angeles curbs as city’s organic waste disposal plan goes into overdrive

Koreatown resident Scott Lyness is well aware that the city of Los Angeles is looking to address food waste.

As he rode his bike to work, he saw more and more green trash cans appearing on the roadside. He read notices sent to homes instructing residents to wait for green bins to be delivered at some point.

Still, nothing prepared Lenis for what happened next: earlier this month, 13 green bins were piled outside the apartment building he manages on New Hampshire Avenue.

In addition to that, the city last week delivered three dumpsters to a smaller building next door he manages, as well as two green dumpsters already in use at the properties.

Lenis, 69, a project manager at USC, said there is nowhere near the two buildings that could store so many full-size canisters without generating enough organic waste to fill them. He tried to get his tenants to contact city offices to say they didn’t want them. He said he even thought about throwing them into the street.

“Our communities are being inundated with green bins,” he said.

City officials are stepping up efforts to require Angelenos to separate more of their food waste (eggshells, coffee grounds, meat bones, uneaten vegetables, orange peels, greasy napkins) to comply with SB 1383, the state’s composting law passed in 2016. They even implemented an online chatbot, Professor Green, that helps residents decide what can and cannot go in the green bin.

SB 1383 would require 75% of organic waste to be diverted from landfills and converted into compost by the end of the year. Food and other organic waste sent to landfills is a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Within 20 years, methane has approximately 80 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

To accomplish this goal, Los Angeles Sanitation Department staff placed large quantities of 90-gallon green bins in front of some apartment buildings, including duplexes, triplexes, quadruples and larger buildings that are included in the city’s curbside trash collection program.

Residents are already familiar with green bins, which have long been used to store lawn clippings and other yard waste, but are now also becoming destinations for food scraps.

Most large apartment buildings in Los Angeles were unaffected by the latest round of green bin deliveries because they participate in recycLA, a city waste franchise program that relies on private trash haulers.

Health officials say Angelenos who prefer smaller, more manageable containers should fill out a form to get a 30- or 60-gallon alternative. They noted that the bins are part of the city’s larger efforts to achieve its zero-waste goal and “lead in sustainability.”

Health department spokesperson Heather Johnson said most of the contents of the green bins are shipped to a facility in Bakersfield where farmers can use the resulting compost.

“While some may find [the bins] It’s inconvenient now, but in the short term they will lead to more waste diversion and cleaner air,” Johnson said in an email.

Despite these serious intentions, Angelenos have been teasing the “green bin apocalypse of 2025,” journalist and podcaster Alissa Walker described on Bluesky . Walker recently shared a photo showing what appears to be 20 green bins in front of a property, next to an abandoned couch.

“This is probably my favorite,” she wrote. “I love it when they line them up neatly and get off the couch.”

Green organic trash cans outside an apartment building in Koreatown.

(Kayla Bartkoski/Los Angeles Times)

Silver Lake resident Tommy Newman posted a photo on Bluesky showing eight dumpsters outside an eight-unit building south of Sunset Boulevard after Walker urged others to send in photos.

“How could they possibly generate so much organic waste every week unless they were running a juice bar there?” wrote Newman, who works for the county housing agency.

On X, another observer summed up the absurdity in a different way. “Due to the bureaucratic craze over composting, Los Angeles is giving every multi-family home a green bin,” the person wrote. “I personally have 5.”

In recent months, the Los Angeles health agency has sent teams of “ambassadors” into communities to educate residents on the need to throw food in green bins.

That means not putting food in the 60-gallon black bins where residents are used to dumping most of their trash, which ends up in landfills. Recyclable items, including glass and aluminum, will continue to go into blue bins.

The changes were also detailed in a flier sent out by the city last summer, with a clear warning in all caps: “Unless we hear back from you immediately, a 90-gallon green container will be delivered to your residence.”

Lyness saw the alerts and was aware of the change. But he thinks most people will miss the message or throw away the flyers. Placing too many bins around town was not a way to encourage people to dispose of organic waste properly, he said.

The city’s new food waste disposal plan is expected to cost $66 million a year, which is one reason the City Council approved significant increases in garbage fees earlier this year, in some cases doubling them. Each 90-gallon green bin costs the city $58.61, including tax, but residents were not charged directly for recent deliveries.

Sanitation officials said they have placed more than 65,000 green bins across the city, with 4,000 remaining to be disposed of. Officials said only 1,000 orders can be processed on a normal working day for residents waiting for their bins to be removed or replaced with smaller bins.

On the corner of North Berendo Street, Lenis’ neighbor Lucy Alvidrez also thought the green bins were a nuisance as she hauled the black ones Thursday afternoon.

“They must have gotten carried away,” she said, pointing to an apartment building across the street with about two dozen green bins on the curb.

Alvidrez, 69, has lived in the neighborhood for two decades and had never had a problem with trash collection until the city equipped each unit in her building with four green bins. She was luckier than Lenis: Sanitation workers got both bins back upon request.

Alvidrez said she would rather the city “spend money on feeding the homeless” rather than buying dumpsters that no one needs.

A dozen green organic trash cans line a street in Koreatown.

(Kayla Bartkoski/Los Angeles Times)

Nearby, Lenis opened a neighbor’s green bin, filled with non-compostable trash that was supposed to go into the black bin. He said if no one knew what to put in the green bin, nothing would improve.

“This is rubbish,” he lamented. “It’s all rubbish.”