In the city of Durham, North Carolina, roughly 30% of the garbage residents throw away is compostable. Two-thirds of that is food scraps (the rest comes from paper products). The problem: Like most municipalities, the city doesn’t offer a residential composting program. And not everyone has the space or desire to build their own slightly stinky backyard bins.

So earlier this summer, Durham started prototyping how to solve its problem on a citywide scale. The idea is to start super small and learn quickly. It’s being supported by the city’s cross-departmental “i-team,” a group of in-house technology and design thinkers funded by Bloomberg Philanthropy, in partnership with the Duke Center for Advanced Hindsight. I-teams typically work alongside city leaders to find efficient ways to improve citizens’ lives.

Before launching the program, Durham figured out if it was economically feasible and even desirable. It discovered that yard waste collectors could probably cart away kitchen and other household waste just as easily. Combine that with some nitrogen-rich “biosolids” from the municipal water treatment plant, and you’d have a nitrogen-rich slurry that decomposed quickly. A survey of several thousand residents also showed they were interested in participating, although many still needed to be taught.

Before launching the program, the team interviewed many residents about what kind of a collection process might work or not. “People get really attached to their methods,” says Shannon Delaney, the i-team strategist “So finding a way that works for them without being prescriptive was interesting for us.”

In June, Durham ran a two-week prototype with just eight households. Each was issued two types of one-and-a-half gallon buckets and biodegradable plastic liners. One was totally solid with a firmly clasping lid, the other more lightweight and perforated so residents could track their progress. The trash was picked up and sorted through weekly, so that the i-team could understand what was working and talk to residents about any concerns.

All told, the effort netted more than 235 pounds of food along with several extremely important lessons. For instance, people like solid bins because they’re more durable. There are also challenges with what the team calls the “ick factor”—smells and bugs—that can be solved by freezing rapidly spoilable things like disposable meat and then placing it in the bin directly before pickup. Having people help shape the process appeared to increase their buy-in of it. “One of the most interesting takeaways for me was people’s willingness to really try something, even if they had never done it before,” Delaney says.

Some people added problematic contaminants to the process, often keeping things wrapped in packaging that won’t compost. Others missed part of the point of the exercise, using it as a chance to simply unload lots of unwanted food.