Composting in Palo Alto

Composting is not optional in Palo Alto. State law and city code both require households to keep food scraps and yard trimmings out of the garbage. The good news is that the city makes it easy. Your green cart takes far more than most people expect, including meat, bones, greasy pizza boxes and used napkins. If you also want to compost in the backyard, the city will give you a bin and teach you how.

This guide covers the green cart rules, how to set up a kitchen routine that does not smell, where the material goes, free backyard and worm composting help and the compost giveaway. For the blue and black carts and billing, see our trash and recycling guide.

What goes in the green cart

The city's curbside collection page and the GreenWaste of Palo Alto material guide list these groups. All of it goes in the same cart.

Branches must be less than 6 inches across and shorter than 4 feet. Everything has to fit inside the cart with the lid closed. The guide also caps the contents at the weight printed on the cart, with a maximum of 200 pounds.

What stays out

The material guide sends these items to the black garbage cart instead: animal waste, bamboo, cactus, dirt, flax, painted wood, palm fronds, pampas grass, poison oak, sod, stable bedding and yucca. Diapers go in the garbage too, including ones sold as compostable. Treated wood is never accepted. Plastic garbage bags and products labeled only Biodegradable are rejected because they do not break down fast enough at the facility.

Bags, pails and a kitchen routine

The city's curbside page asks single-family homes to put compostables in the cart loosely. If you want to line your kitchen pail, the city's FAQ says to buy bags clearly labeled Compostable or BPI certified, the mark of the Biodegradable Products Institute. Local stores sell them in small pail sizes, 13 gallon kitchen sizes and larger yard sizes.

Most of the trouble with food scraps is smell and fruit flies. A few habits fix both:

1. Use a lidded pail. Any container with a lid works. Empty it into the green cart every two or three days, as the city suggests.
2. Freeze the worst of it. Keep meat, fish and bones in the freezer until collection day.
3. Layer with yard waste. Dropping scraps on top of leaves or trimmings keeps the cart cleaner. In leaf season this is easy.
4. Line with paper. A sheet of newspaper or a used paper towel at the bottom of the pail soaks up liquid.

Apartment dwellers get help too. The city's FAQ says the city and GreenWaste provide kitchen collection buckets for multifamily residents. Ask your property manager or call GreenWaste at (650) 493-4894. Our renting guide covers the rest of apartment life in town.

Extra yard trimmings and leaves

A big pruning job can fill the cart in an afternoon. GreenWaste accepts occasional extras, once or twice a year, next to the green cart in paper bags, cardboard boxes or bundles no bigger than 2 by 4 feet. If you have extra yard waste every week, ask for a larger cart or a second one. Clean Up Day takes up to six boxes, bags or bundles of yard trimmings, each under 60 pounds. Our bulky item pickup guide covers Clean Up Day in full.

Leaves are the biggest seasonal load. They go in the green cart, never in the gutter. Our street sweeping guide explains the leaf rules and why the city enforces them. After the holidays, cut trees also go in the compost stream, as our holiday tree recycling guide explains.

Where your compost goes

Palo Alto once composted its own yard waste near the Baylands. That facility closed in 2012, a year after the city landfill closed. Today GreenWaste trucks the green cart material to the Zero Waste Energy Development Company in San Jose. According to the city's solid waste flow page, the plant uses a dry anaerobic digester. The gas it captures produces renewable energy that runs the facility and feeds the grid. What is left goes to the Z-Best Composting Facility in Gilroy to finish as compost.

That industrial process is why the green cart can take meat and bones. A backyard pile does not get hot enough or stay sealed enough to handle them without pests.

The rules behind it

California's SB 1383 requires every jurisdiction to keep organic waste out of landfills, because rotting food releases methane. Cities have had to enforce it since January 1, 2024. Palo Alto's version sits in the municipal code alongside its Recycling and Composting Ordinance. The practical rule is short: food scraps, yard trimmings and food-soiled paper go in the green cart, not the black one.

The city audits collection routes. Contamination also costs money. The GreenWaste rate schedule effective July 1, 2026 charges $30.90 for a compost cart contamination, meaning the entire cart is dumped instead of composted. Sorting well pays off in another way: your monthly bill is set by the size of your black garbage cart, so moving scraps to the green cart can let you drop to a smaller one.

Backyard composting help

Home composting turns leaves and vegetable scraps into soil food and cuts down on truck trips. The city's home composting page describes the free program it runs with the Recycling and Waste Reduction Commission of Santa Clara County and the UC Cooperative Extension Master Composters.

• Workshops: Free, about two hours long and for adults only. Pre-registration is required. The city cancels a workshop if fewer than 15 people sign up.
• Free bins: Palo Alto residents who attend can get one free compost bin or worm bin per household while supplies last.
• Registration: Online through the links on the city page or by phone at (408) 918-4640.
• County workshops: Palo Alto residents may also attend Compost Basics and Worm Composting Basics workshops held elsewhere in Santa Clara County.

In 2026 the city listed Compost Basics workshops on March 21, April 25 and September 12 at the Lucie Stern Community Center and on October 10 at the Eleanor Pardee Community Garden. A worm composting workshop ran on June 13 at Gamble Garden. The last listed session of the year is a composting workshop on Saturday, November 7, 2026, from 10 a.m. to noon at Gamble Garden, 1431 Waverley Street. The 2027 schedule had not been posted in early November 2026. In 2026 the first session was in March, so check the city page early in the year.

Worm bins

The city describes worm composting as a no-fuss, low-maintenance way to compost kitchen scraps. A worm bin fits on a balcony or in a garage, which makes it a good option for apartment dwellers. The worms turn scraps into castings, a rich soil amendment for indoor and outdoor plants. The workshop covers which scraps worms like and which to avoid.

Backyard basics

A working pile needs a mix of dry brown material and wet green material. Browns are things like leaves and shredded cardboard. Greens are vegetable scraps and fresh clippings. Keep it about as damp as a wrung-out sponge and turn it now and then to add air. Leave out meat, dairy, bones, pet waste and diseased plants. Those go in the green cart. Finished compost improves soil structure and helps it hold water, which ties into the tips in our water conservation guide.

Free compost giveaway

The city runs a Compost Giveaway Station at the Eleanor Pardee Community Garden, 851 Center Drive near Martin Avenue. Our Eleanor Pardee Park guide covers the park around it.

• Open Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Mondays.
• Palo Alto residents only.
• Bring your own shovel and containers.
• Only one car at the pile at a time.
• Limit of 96 gallons per week, while supplies last.

Drive slowly. Gardeners and walkers share the area. If you need more than the limit, the garden centers near Palo Alto sell bagged and bulk compost.

Frequently asked questions