Mill Creek's Free Compost Bin Comes From a Group That Started With Local Businesses
Until late this summer, Mill Creek had one main way to keep food scraps out of the garbage: pay WM for a green cart. That changed when Compost the Creek, a Mill Creek nonprofit, put a free public food-scrap bin near the North Creek trailhead entrance at 153rd Street SE. The Mill Creek Beacon reported on August 28, 2026 that it is the Town Center's first public composting station.
The bin is the newest piece of a small operation that started with local businesses. That history explains what the bin is good for. It's a free option for households that don't have a curbside cart. For anyone who already has one, it doesn't replace it.
Compost the Creek describes its main work as collecting compost from local businesses and disposing of it properly. The partners on its homepage are all Mill Creek names: Thai Rhapsody, M.C. Cuts, NRGize and Claypit Cuisine.
The group says it has collected more than 3,000 pounds of compost since 2025. It credits that work with preventing more than 25,000 net pounds of CO2 emissions. That total comes from a handful of storefronts, so this is a grassroots effort. It isn't a municipal program, and that tells you how to treat the bin. It's a community resource that depends on people using it carefully.
The same homepage says the group is working to add "multiple communal composting bins in the Mill Creek Town Center." For now, its communal bin page shows one location, the North Creek Trail Bin.
In the City of Mill Creek, WM handles residential collection, and food scraps go in the food-and-yard cart. Garbage service comes with weekly recycling. The green cart is a separate subscription.
Under WM's City of Mill Creek rates effective July 1, 2026, the green cart options are:
| Food and yard option | Monthly price |
|---|---|
| 96-gallon cart, emptied weekly, alongside garbage service | $16.32 |
| Qualified senior 96-gallon cart, emptied weekly | $10.60 |
| Food and yard service only, no garbage | $18.01 |
| Recycling plus food and yard, no garbage | $28.25 |
At $16.32 a month, the standard cart comes to about $196 a year. For a household with a big yard and steady leaf drop, that buys a lot of capacity. A smaller household that only needs to get rid of coffee grounds and vegetable trimmings may be paying for more cart than it uses.
The Beacon framed Compost the Creek's goal the same way. Curbside organics service and home composting equipment cost money, and the free bin lets more households take part without either. The Beacon also noted that the bin is built from 100% recycled wood.
WM's rate page makes its own case for composting, and it's about your garbage bill. Garbage rates depend on container size. WM lists putting food scraps and food-soiled paper in the food-and-yard cart as one way to shrink your garbage, and tells customers to "be the first on your block to downsize."
The posted rates show what that looks like:
Moving from the 35-gallon cart to the 20-gallon insert cuts $7.83 a month. That covers about half the cost of the $16.32 green cart. Whether the swap pays off depends on how much yard waste a household produces, so this is a personal calculation and not a rule of thumb. If your yard waste is light and your food scraps go to the trailhead bin, you get to the smaller garbage container without adding a green cart. Rates and eligibility for senior pricing are set by WM and the City, so confirm your own account with WM before changing service. This is general information, not financial advice.
WM's food and yard waste page and its Mill Creek recycling guide list what the green cart takes: food scraps, food-soiled paper and yard trimmings. They also list what it doesn't take:
Getting this wrong costs money. WM's rate table lists a $27.41 charge for contaminated food and yard waste.
The trailhead bin works differently. Compost the Creek's bin page gives its location and nothing more. It doesn't list accepted items, hours or rules for drop-offs. Plain food scraps without plastic are the obvious fit for a shared bin. For anything less clear-cut, email the group at [email protected] before you leave it there. A bin run by volunteers has no contamination fee to absorb a bad load, so it relies on careful users.
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, and by the first week of November, a lot of Mill Creek porches will have a softening pumpkin on them. Neither WM's Mill Creek cart guidance nor its recycling guide mentions pumpkins by name. Before putting a whole pumpkin in your green cart, a quick call to WM is the safe move, especially if it has paint, glitter or a candle stub inside. Those don't count as food scraps.
If you'd like your pumpkin to go somewhere specific, the closest organized drop-off on the 2026 calendar is in Duvall. March of the Vegetables is taking pumpkins on November 1, 2026 at the Duvall Foundation for the Arts property, 14301 Railroad Way NE. Drop-off opens after 1 p.m., and a Spooky Walk runs from 5 to 7:30 p.m. The pumpkins then go to Hearth Farm for composting. It's a drive from Mill Creek, but it's a concrete place to bring a carved pumpkin, and the walk makes an evening of it.
The trailhead bin is set up for everyday kitchen scraps. A carved pumpkin is bulky, so check with Compost the Creek before bringing one.
The bin keeps working as long as people use it carefully, and that's where volunteers come in. Compost the Creek's Get Involved page lists a meetup every Wednesday from 3:30 to 4:15 p.m., outside Mill Creek DIY Tea Lab at 15224 Main St STE 101. The page says the group isn't affiliated with the tea lab, which is just the meeting spot.
Volunteers sign up through a form on the page. They agree to be respectful and must live in the Greater Seattle Area. Mill Creek businesses that want to join Thai Rhapsody, M.C. Cuts, NRGize and Claypit Cuisine as partners can email the group directly.
The meetup is a short walk from the bin. If you're on the North Creek Trail on a Wednesday afternoon, you can drop off scraps at the trailhead and then stop by Main Street. Both sit at the edge of the Town Center blocks you probably already walk.
Compost the Creek has asked anyone who wants to help the program grow to donate through compostthecreek.org. As of this fall, the trailhead bin is the only public one the group lists.
At Becca Locke, we follow the small local efforts that make day-to-day life in Mill Creek easier, like a recycled-wood bin at the trailhead and a Wednesday meetup on Main Street. If you'd like a list of the WM services and local resources tied to your address, reach out and we'll put it together for you.
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