Compost Calculator

Twice as much, at the same per-person rate. Weekly, monthly, and yearly compost totals are all calculated as household size multiplied by the compost-per-person rate you enter, with no other adjustment applied, so the relationship is purely proportional -- doubling household size while holding the per-person rate constant doubles every compost total, and the same is true in reverse for the per-person rate.

Estimated annual CO2 savings is calculated by applying a fixed emissions factor to your yearly compost total, reflecting the broad idea that composting avoids some of the methane that the same organic material would generate decomposing anaerobically in a landfill. It scales directly with however much compost you produce, so anything that raises your compost totals -- more people, or a higher per-person rate -- raises the CO2 savings estimate by the same proportion.

Compost per person per week is meant to capture all compostable material one person typically contributes, including food scraps like vegetable trimmings and coffee grounds plus any yard waste routed to the same compost system, entered as a single combined rate in kilograms. The default of 1.5 kg per person per week is a starting estimate; households that compost more of their food waste rather than sending it to the trash will have a meaningfully higher real rate.

No -- this calculator estimates the volume of raw compostable material generated over time, not the finished, cured compost you'd actually have on hand at any given moment. Real compost typically takes weeks to months to fully break down depending on the method (hot pile, cold pile, or vermicomposting), so the yearly figure here represents total material diverted from the trash over a year, not a snapshot of finished compost volume.