#AlbanyIsAllBiz | FoodScraps360 In Albany Expands Compost Pickup Service and Operations
June 27, 2025
Roughly 10 percent of the Capital Region’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by landfill emissions, which in essence is mostly decomposing food and organic waste producing methane. With a different approach, sending that same waste to a composting facility, would instead allow it to enrich soil and benefit the environment.
Who’s helping to divert food waste from area residents colleges, restaurants, hospitals and other commercial entities that generate a significant amount of unused food? An Albany woman-owned business, FoodScraps360, LLC is working with local composting facilities, delivering its commercial and municipal customers’ food scraps and compostable material.
Its owner Diana Wright is a native of Fulton County, Wright spent her early years close to woods and rivers, lakes and mountains. Working as a commercial artist, later shifting to real estate. Her cabin on Great Sacandaga Lake is maintained with solar, food and specialty gardens, composting and bee keeping.
She became owner of the business in 2019, which was formerly established as Empire Zero, and has steadily been working to scale up operations.
 
View this post on Instagram
;
“We’ve been working very hard, we’re doing well, and we’ve collected more than a million pounds of food in the last three and a half years,” said Wright.
FoodScraps360 is working closely with local municipalities, including Albany, Bethlehem, Troy, and Schenectady. These area partnerships and FoodScraps360’s residential and commercial pickup services are supporting the local infrastructure needed for the Region to better and sustainably manage organic waste.
Its residential work takes on curbside door-to-door pickup throughout the week, and its commercial collection services aim to support mid-sized food businesses. Once picked up by staff and sorted through if needed to ensure there’s no contaminated material, it’s brought to the Town of Bethlehem’s composting facility and sold to local gardeners and other customers for use.
FoodScraps360 is currently serving more than 370 area residents and more than 20 local businesses and organizations.
Their team has three trucks it uses for its pickup services, one used for residential and one for commercial pickups, while the third just purchased in 2024 can double its uses either serving residential or small commercial pickups. This new truck allowed them to expand their service area. The purchase was made possible with the support of Capitalize Albany Corporation’s Building Improvement Grant Program, which came online as part of the City of Albany’s American Rescue Plan Act funding process. Their expansion was recently featured on Spectrum News.
Roughly a year into operation the pandemic slowed business, but Wright explained once it was confirmed the COVID-19 wasn’t being spread through food waste business started to pick up and they began looking for an additional truck. However, due to a shortage in used vehicles and rising costs driven by the pandemic Wright had been unable to expand her fleet until recently.
“We started getting an uptick, but we only had one truck (for each service) and if it goes down and needs maintenance then we can’t do the route, so having this back up truck greatly improves my reliability and we want that consistency in our customer service,” she said.
With the new additional vehicle, a Ford F-250 with an arm-lift capable of lifting 32-gallon commercial bins, FoodScraps360 is able to service customers without interruptions when its other vehicle is in the shop, and it allows for the ability of two routes running on the same day if weather interrupts regular pickup scheduling.
Wright is more confident in expanding her team’s range of commercial clients now because of the increased capacity. They recently absorbed new businesses and organizations including Honest Weight Food Co-Op, Emma Willard School, and the University at Albany’s downtown campus which it gained when a major competitor left the area.
She explained her groundwork to scale up business is crucial, as new and expected State legislation is about to considerably ramp up the trajectory of local food waste diversion, many new businesses will be required to send their organic waste to a facility.
“Right now, (as of January 2022) any entity that produces two tons of solid organic food waste a week has to divert it from the landfill if there’s a hauler available to do it, and if there’s a facility within 25 miles to bring it to,” Wright said.
These are the current active requirements under legislation which is changing at the end of this year. With the law currently only impacting food waste producers within 25 miles of a facility, wright said it significantly limits the number of entities required to divert their waste as the Town of Bethlehem’s municipal composting facility is the only one of its kind in the Capital Region with the infrastructure to accept food scraps.
She noted though that many of the largest food waste producers including local grocery chains have been diverting their waste even though many of they’re locations are beyond any 25 mile radius and that they have haulers bringing them to larger facilities further from the area.
“They’ve been doing it, just because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.
Bethlehem’s facility uses aerated static pile system technology, which involves an electric blower set on a timer to pump heated air through perforated pipes beneath a mound made of a three to one yard waste to food scraps ratio, transforming it into compost. This system takes what is normally a 12 month process involving manual and machine labor and reduces it down to a non-labor intensive 12 week process.
In 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation to expand New York’s food donation and food scraps recycling law, which provides food to qualifying low-income state residents, and with the program’s expansion it will also require more food waste generators to recycle and compost any food scraps that are inedible or can’t be donated. Since launching in 2022, food waste generators have already diverted tens of millions of pounds.
Beginning in 2026, legislation S.5331-A/A.5906-A will promote the collection of more excess edible food and send more food scraps for recycling—including composting and anaerobic digestion—by gradually increasing the number of businesses and institutions required to donate excess edible food and recycle food scraps if they are within 50 miles (increased from the prior law’s 25 miles) of an organics recycler.
Wright expects New York State, Albany County, the City of Albany and other local municipalities will continue to gradually strengthen food waste recycling initiatives and diversion laws over the next several years and her plan is to keep building her infrastructure up to be able to serve more mid-size commercial food scraps producers. She’s hoping to help and build relationships now with the mid-size producers that may have challenges with adapting their recycling operations in the coming years.
“That’s what we’re working on, is to try and get all these mid-size people able to be up and running that are going to have to be in the next three years,” Wright said.
FoodScraps360’s goal is to make composting as accessible as possible in the Capital Region. Right now in the United States roughly 40 percent of all food goes to waste and about half of most landfills are made up of food and organic waste.
Wright hopes more area residents will take on and enjoy composting. She said City of Albany residents can find a nice spot in their backyard if they have one and use the City’s backyard composting program, or they can consider curbside pickup or look to local drop -off locations.
“There are three options in the City of Albany, there’s a drop spot at Radix and at Tivoli and you have the backyard composting, or you can have curbside pickup,” she said.
Albany’s Radix Ecological Sustainability Center has a low-cost food scraps curbside pickup service and also accepts drop offs at no charge. The Friends of Tivoli Lake Preserve and Farm also have a food scraps drop-off location and composting program. City of Albany residents can learn more about the city’s home composting program here.
Area residents and businesses can learn more about FoodScraps360 at https://www.foodscraps360.com/.
ALBANY’S ALL BUSINESS #AlbanyIsAllBiz
From new enterprises to long-standing old favorites, exciting things are happening all over the Capital City. The #AlbanyisAllBiz series puts a spotlight on members of the business community, keeping residents and visitors alike up to date on the latest developments and offerings, including restaurants, retail, nonprofits, and more.
Social Media