Compost Enterprises
Profitable, sustainable enterprises are being built around the resource that is organic waste. Your scraps might be worth more than you think.
carterscompost.com
No article on enterprise opportunities in compost, would be complete with out first referencing the story of Carter’s Compost.
I kept thinking, “Who’s the adult behind this?” and as I listened to the charming young “Carter — almost nine years — Schmidt” describe his business.
He tells how his team of Bike Powered, Neighbourhood Kitchen Scrap Picker-Uppers are reducing waste to landfill and how he can’t grow fast enough to meet the customer demand.
Listen to his low overhead business plan and then do the math.
Have a look around his website, it’s quite an inspiration!
Can you see your community with young people making pocket-money like this, while being such a beneficial presence in the world?
compostnow.org
CompostNow began after Matt realised how difficult it was to manage a home compost receptacle, especially in small backyards, apartments, and condominiums.
Matt set out to create a system that would allow anyone to compost at home without the hassle and maintenance of a compost bin.
Founded in 2010, CompostNow began with humble roots. The company started by collecting and composting food scraps just from friends and family. Today the service has expanded throughout the Triangle and Asheville to many households and has helped divert over 150,000 kgs from the landfill.
We aspire to be a catalyst for change in how society manages, and most importantly, views our waste materials and food supply chain. We aim to bring transparency to a broken system and offering a more whole, more integrated relationship between how we manage our resources and how we grow our food. Our purpose is to enable a more vibrant civic ecosystem through waste reduction, a stronger local food system, and connection of neighbors to each other and the places that they live.
compostpedallers.com
The Compost Pedallers is a 100% bike-powered compost recycling program in Austin, Texas that collects compostables from homes and businesses and pedals them directly to nearby urban farms and community gardens to grow more local food.
“Our mission is to build a more vibrant Austin community by reducing waste, strengthening our local food system.”
Who will do this in Auckland?
wecompost.co.nz
We Compost is an Auckland compost pickup service for commercial organic waste from cafes, restaurants, hotels and other large organisations who have no way to deal with the organic waste. As yet they do not offer a domestic compost collection service.
Arriving back in New Zealand in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, Steve Rickerby found a job at an Insurance company based in Auckland.
The insurance company had just moved in to Auckland’s first 5 Green Star rated office building and was leading the way in corporate sustainability in New Zealand. As part of the rating, staff were separating waste in to recycling, general waste and organics but there was no viable means to collect and process the organic waste so it was still ending up in landfill.
Steve decided to solve the problem and build a collection service to compost organic waste and help rebuild soil biomass in agriculture rather than sending it to landfill.
Six months later, Steve left his job at the Insurance Company and started We Compost.
The Opportunity
While I’ve only featured three examples here and two of those from outside NZ, if you Google “compost services” the list goes on for pages. If you limit your search to New Zealand, you’ll see that almost all of the compost collection services are run by local government, and done on a large scale.
Getting food from the farm to fork eats up 10 percent of the total US energy budget, uses 50% of US land, and swallows 80% of all freshwater consumed in the US. Yet, 40% of food in the United States today goes uneaten and most of that gets sent to a landfill [report] — where the resource is no longer available to grow food.
As our industrial food system coughs and splutters its way through the closing days of the fossil fuel era, people are looking to more local solutions.
95% of our food is grown in soil and nutrients are important for ensuring the food is nutrient-dense and healthy.
Good compost feeds the soil and is an important part of the puzzle.
It looks like a landscape, ripe with opportunities.
