When talking about trash, you may have noticed a few smiley-face covered bins around the city of Bozeman. But have you ever wondered what the cute smiley faces stand for?

Next time you have a banana peel, you may want to pause before you go and toss it in the trash. Just remember, one man's trash is another gardener's treasure.

Officials launch game-changing program to keep food from winding up in trash: 'Really exciting' "It's been in the works for a few years."

"Having composting available to all city residents is really exciting," Commissioner Karrie Kahle told The Enterprise. "It's been in the works for a few years."

Ryan Green and Adrienne Huckabone cut their composting teeth on the East Coast, working in both agricultural and community composting settings. Green worked at the New York City Compost Project hosted by the Lower East Side Ecology Center in Manhattan; Huckabone was a volunteer at their neighborhood community garden’s composting operation.

Owners Ryan Green and Adrienne Huckabone have long offered curbside pick-up. However, some folks live outside the pick-up zone, don't have a need for the service or have budgets that make this option unobtainable, including a new "pay-what-you-can" subscription option.

Local couple's business transforms waste into compost.

Several piles contain coffee cups, bags and orange peels. One pile — the finished product— looks like any mound of dirt. Another pile is covered by what looks like a giant electric blanket — technically known as an aerated static pile system….

Founded in 2016, Happy Trash Can is the first composting service in the Gallatin Valley, and maintains a formidable impact, reclaiming food from 900 area households and 50-60 commercial businesses. All finished compost is available for pick-up by subscribers and local farms, including Calliope Flowers, Gallatin Valley Botanical, Kokoro Flowers, Bridger Farms, and Foxglove Flower Farm.

Adrienne Huckabone and Ryan Green almost canceled the 6th annual Pumpkin Smash when 30 mph winds started blowing rain sideways. But then the sun emerged and the show went on. It was a smashing hit.

Families arrived at Story Mill Park in waves, ready to thwack their Halloween jack o’lanterns with an assortment of tools…

So Rundberg and Belgrade-based composting business Happy Trash Can came up with a plan: install a public composting bin at Lot G, for Lot G customers and Bozeman residents to drop off their compostable food containers.

From there, the containers will go to Happy Trash Can’s facility in Belgrade, where they’ll break down into compost for local farms and gardeners.

The city of Bozeman is exploring options to offer composting for food waste as a city service, like curbside garbage pickup.

The city applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help pay for the new program and is working to form partnerships to make it happen, like with Happy Trash Can. The local business can help provide processing services to compost raw waste the city collects.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year Huckabone and Green opted for “Pumpkin Drop” days at the Bozeman Winter Farmers Market.

People have one last opportunity to have their pumpkins and squashes composted on Nov. 21, Huckabone said. People dropped off lots of pumpkins at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds at the Oct. 31 and Nov. 14 events.

Happy Trash Can, based in Bozeman, MT, was recognized as the Compost Manufacturer of the Year – Small Scale. Founders Adrienne Huckabone and Ryan Green started Happy Trash Can to create a local, closed-loop food system, collecting and composting food scraps on a local farm. In the years since its founding, Happy Trash Can has expanded its footprint multiple times to include multiple 100- and 50-foot windrow systems.