Putting your food scraps down the garbage disposal is worse than putting it in the landfill. You use fresh drinking water, which is really precious—and resource intensive to use—to do this. You also have to pay the City for your water use that comes into and leaves your house. This action squanders a lot of nutrients in the food that could be reclaimed. You ground up food scraps get mixed with all sorts of chemicals, sewage, forever pollutants, and other things that have to be removed in a facility. Your scraps also—because of the ridiculous system we have—run the risk of ending up being dumped into the rivers with raw sewage when there are over flow events. It is a deeply irresponsible way to process all of a household’s food waste.

Composting is an important way for you to immediately reduce your impact on the planet and to help mitigate climate change. When food scraps or compostable materials are put into a landfill, they turn into methane gas (a climate breakdown accelerant that is 25 times more potent than carbon emissions) and liquefy and mix with toxic chemicals to become leachate that will contaminate groundwater. When you compost, you reclaim the nutrients that are in your food scraps. You sink their carbon back into the soil for the future use of raising plants.

We provide food scrap pick up, and drop off sites, in Greater Fort Wayne, Huntertown, Roanoke, Leo/Cedarville, Huntington, Wabash, North Manchester, South Whitley, New Haven, and Columbia City. We are looking to expand to other municipalities.

Fill out and submit the form on this page. It will go directly to everyone at Dirt Wain and we can resolve the issue more rapidly.

Dirt Wain picks up food scraps, yard waste, and pet waste, from households, businesses, organizations, and communities, and turns them into compost.

Yes. They are a valuable source of carbon and good for hungry microbes.

You do not need to break the eggs open. You can put them in the compost whole.

This is a good thing to add to the compost. The cheesecloth is made from cotton and will decompose rapidly in the compost.

Yes. You can also put in wooden popsicle sticks and skewers.

Yes, but only if they are not printed in full color and glossy (see above FAQ for more information). Tear them up into pieces and add them to your compost bucket. They are made up of tree pulp and will break down rapidly and add their carbonaceous nutrients to the compost pile.

You most likely can compost the items. Please send us an image of the front and back of the package. If the packaging has "BPI Certified" on it, then you can skip contacting us and compost the material.

If the pants are still wearable, take them to a thrift store. If the pants are 100% cotton, you can compost them. Remove any elastic bands, zippers, buttons or other items that are not cotton before you add it to your bucket. You must cut the pants into pieces the size of your thumb before adding them. If you do not, we will throw them away.

You can compost pizza boxes that are printed directly on cardboard in a couple of colors like the ones pictured above. The ink is minimal and there is not coating over the printing. You should recycle the pizza boxes that are printed in full color and are glossy. They are coated in a plastic sealant. The cardboard will break down leaving the plastic to contaminate the compost pile.

Absolutely. Bamboo is a grass and is welcome in the compost bin. Make sure you break the plastic bristles off first and put them in the trash.

We prefer Purina’s “Yesterday’s News” cat litter as the bag is made of paper and can be recycled. Here are some possible choices that each have non-recylable, non-compostable bags: https://bestreviews.com/pets/litterboxes/best-biodegradable-cat-litter