Boston Housing Authority, MA
Client: Boston Housing Authority
Use case: Waste, recycling and organics containerization in a high-density public housing development
Solution: Secure, access-controlled waste and organics enclosure platform using metroSTOR
Scale: Pilot deployment at Bunker Hill, serving a high-pressure waste deposit area
Impact: Improved sorting accuracy, early organics diversion, cleaner waste areas and a data-backed pathway to citywide scale
Boston Housing Authority implemented a controlled waste and organics containerization pilot at Bunker Hill, its largest public housing development, to address persistent contamination, rodent pressure and poor waste area conditions. Traditional open dumpsters had failed to control behavior or generate reliable data. The pilot demonstrated measurable improvements in cleanliness, sorting accuracy and early food waste diversion, while creating a defensible evidence base for funding, expansion and city-level decision making.
Bunker Hill is a large, legacy public housing development in Charlestown with a long history of infrastructure pressure. Like many dense, multi-family housing environments, waste management had become a persistent operational and public health challenge.
Open dumpsters and carts contributed to high contamination across trash, recycling and organics, frequent overflow and bulky item dumping, and sustained rodent activity driven by exposed food waste. These conditions affected resident satisfaction, staff workload and neighborhood perception, while limiting BHA’s ability to demonstrate progress against zero waste and environmental goals.
Previous approaches focused on service provision rather than system design, offering little control over behavior and no reliable mechanism for tracking performance or building a case for investment.
BHA recognized that education and signage alone were insufficient in a high-pressure, shared waste environment. The authority required an infrastructure-led intervention that could materially change behavior, improve site conditions and generate credible baseline data.
The decision to pilot a containerized system was driven by three non-negotiables: reducing rodent attractants, improving waste separation without constant enforcement, and creating visibility into diversion outcomes to support future funding and expansion decisions.BHA partnered with metroSTOR, alongside consultants and city stakeholders, to design a pilot that could be evaluated rigorously before any commitment to wider rollout.
The pilot replaced open dumpsters with secure, access-controlled metroSTOR enclosures for trash, recycling and organics. The system established a clear, centralized drop-off point, shifting waste disposal from an unmanaged activity to a designed behavior.
Each enclosure provided physical separation of waste streams, restricted misuse, and improved containment of food waste to reduce rodent access. The platform was selected not as a one-off product installation, but as a repeatable system capable of supporting behavior change, monitoring and future scale.
Installation was completed in spring 2024. Following commissioning, BHA and project partners conducted documented visual inspections in July 2024 to establish an initial operational baseline.
Inspections assessed fill levels, contamination rates, estimated weights using standardized volume-to-weight calculations, and overall site cleanliness. The review covered multiple trash containers, five recycling streams and dedicated organics collection.
This inspection period was explicitly framed as an initial baseline, with the intent to expand monitoring through further assessments and city-verified tonnage data as the program matured.
Seasonal pressures, including holiday overflow and winter access conditions, were observed and logged as operational considerations rather than structural failures.
Early findings demonstrated meaningful improvement in system performance.
Across all waste streams within the metroSTOR enclosure area, average contamination measured 11.5%. For an early-stage, multi-family deployment, this level of sorting accuracy indicates that enclosure design, access control and clear separation materially influenced resident behavior.
By January 2025, BHA reported the diversion of over 1,600 pounds of food scraps from incineration and landfill to on-farm composting through the pilot system. This confirmed the early viability of organics capture in a dense public housing context where previous models had struggled.
Operationally, enclosures remained largely clean and functional throughout the inspection period. Isolated issues such as bulky items were visible and manageable, rather than dispersed across the site, improving staff response and oversight.
The pilot was conducted at a waste deposit area with historically high rodent pressure, making it a stringent test case. Its success directly informed a proposed multi-site expansion, which was subsequently included as an option in the City of Boston’s participatory budgeting process.
The rodent-prevention initiative ranked second among all citywide proposals, emerging as a top priority for Boston Housing Authority, city agencies and residents.
As a result, BHA is advancing plans to deploy the metroSTOR enclosure platform across nine additional locations in Boston, targeting sites with elevated rodent activity and operational challenges. The program is moving from pilot validation to community-mandated scale, supported by measured performance rather than assumption.
Thus far, we have diverted over 1,600 lbs of food scraps and organics at Charlestown from incineration and landfill to on-farm composting using your metroSTOR enclosures.Bobby Bell, Green Infrastructure Deployment Manager
metroSTOR’s innovative system has been a valuable asset in empowering our community to reimagine “waste”, helping residents become more intentional about their resources and where they deposit them.
