San Diego Hires Homeless to Pick Trash at the Dump's Green-Waste Facility

San Diego hires homeless to pick trash at the dump's green-waste facility

The two-week pilot program that concluded Wednesday aimed to improve the quality of the compost created at the site.

San Diego’s war on waste gets a homeless human touch

The bureaucrats of San Diego, in a moment of fevered clarity, decided to unleash a savage little social experiment: take the lost and the damned—the people clawing their way out of homelessness—and drop them knee-deep into the city’s green-bin garbage. Yes, comrades, the “Follow the Compost Pile” pilot program, a two-week stint at the Miramar Greenery, where the new laborers were tasked with pawing through mountains of rotting vegetable guts, co…

San Diego Completes Organic Waste Pilot Program that Employed Homeless People to Improve Compost

KPBS - City News Service / August 26, 2025 The city of San Diego recently completed a pilot program in which people transitioning out of homelessness were hired to pick contaminants out of organic waste collected in the city's green bins, it was announced Monday. The two-week program, which concluded last week, was intended to improve the quality of compost generated by Miramar Greenery. The "Follow The Compost Pile" project employed homeless pe…