Has anyone here started a community composting program? Starting one in my home town. Wanted to get some more information on startup. Thank you!
Posted Nov 11, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC
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I mean it’s not really a community compost operation but I have about 10-12 families that bring me their material and food scraps for the chickens.
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I run a couple of them at community gardens that accept compostable material from neighbors, but we don’t do pickups except for bagged leaves. Getting volunteers to pick up from coffeeshops/restaurants requires regular or scheduled pickups, it’s hard to find folks for that. We do well for our scale though- a yard or two of finished compost every 2-3 months.
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I used to run one at a big community garden. We partnered w restaurants, coffee shops, a local municipality and the university for leaves, and got manpower/machine time from the municipality and the university in exchange for taking their leaves and saving them gas on hauling.
What are you wanting to know about the setup?
You need land and water first, I’ll tell you that.
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I hadn’t thought about using the municipalities resources as an exchange! That’s a great idea!
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Where are you located there may be ressources that can help you getting started.
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WYOMING
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Some cities here have official "compost masters",those are volunteers helping you with composting. They organize demo days once in a while. They're trained by a province wide organisation.
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i would love to hear your initial plans,I do run a small community compost operation.
I’m currently collecting from restaurants and food services that have higher amounts of waste. Also started working with local arborist for tree limbs to run through the chipper. All compost is being processed at an organic farm with land to spare. Municipality’s didn’t want to spend the extra money so I’m having to bootstrap it all.
Sad on the municipality. My city requires composting from everyone. The nice thing about the bigger piles is they get much hotter and can break down the compostable plastic that are now required out this way for single use items. The quality of the compost produced isnt great unfortunately because not everyone properly sorts their stuff and you need to be careful of contamination. If however you are confident in your sources (the general public is meh, but local farms yey) then you are good to go.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/08/08/pfas-compost-contamination
i have a few questions before I comment… are you the only one doing this or do you have a partner? Are you charging for your service, does your Local government know about you?
I’m not charging currently. No partners. I’m on my own at the moment. I’d like to charge enough to cover cost, hoping to sell organic compost on the backend. But it makes cash flow a bear. Looking for solutions.
The community Gov stone-walled me. They weren’t interested, and I’m not going to let it stop me.
first thing you should do is find and read ALL applicable laws,depending on your region you may find that composting the way you want to do it is illegal DONT LET THAT DISCOURAGE YOU just find ways to…not get caught. (I have managed to skirt by for 2.5 years)
find a partner it’s so much more work than you think!
Do not underestimate vehicular maintenance I pay $1500-2000 EXTRA per year ( though I do live on a snowy mountain)
these are just a few basic things that would have helped me to know when I was just starting out ,there is so so much to cover and I do not want to bog you down with unnecessary information so please please please feel from to ask me direct questions either here or through the chat function.
I’m curious whether an LLC or nonprofit would be better. I’m leaning towards non-profit. But I’m not sure yet.
Suggest you use northwestregisteredagent.com to set up LLC, cost $39 +State Fee . They provide free business address and free operating agreement .