Denton resident Nancy Stockdale had thought about composting for months to help her home garden.
Composting is the process of breaking down organic materials — like fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds, paper plates, leaves, wood chips and grass clippings — into a nutrient-rich soil amendment. It can take months to create usable compost.
For Stockdale, composting is important — it diverts waste from the landfill and is good for the environment. When she learned about Compost Denton, a new business that collects compost for businesses and residences in the city, she was thrilled.
“I absolutely love it and it’s super easy,” Stockdale said. “I’m so into it now that I went to work and took an apple, and I brought home the core so I could put it in my [compost bin] instead of the garbage can.”
In just seven weeks, her household of two has diverted more than 40 pounds from the local landfill.
Andrew Miller and Thomas Wild co-founded the business about a year ago after finding each other through Miller’s peer-to-peer compost website, FeedDenton.org. While Miller was trying to get people to use the service, Wild was working on forming a compost pickup service.
“The issue was people were signing up, but no one was actually using it, at least from what I could tell,” Miller said.
“But the way that Thomas was trying to use it, I could tell he had a lot of drive and motivation to actually get this going, so my thought process at the time was ‘I need a partner like that who really wants to do this.’”
For both, composting is important for several reasons. Landfills are becoming filled with materials that could easily be repurposed for different use, like soil. Then the organic material isn’t breaking down properly and creates too much methane gas, Wild said.
“It’s important to us on a personal level, I think, to do what we can to make our community better,” Wild said. “We’re both very sustainability oriented, and I think we both just saw an opportunity to present this sustainable method to our community where it was lacking.”
The pair were able to do a four-month trial with residential and businesses as customers to see if Compost Denton was viable. After rave reviews, some constructive criticism and a few awards from Microsoft and local recycling organizations, they were able to launch the business in August.
The way it works is customers pay $16 a month for the composting service. In exchange, they get a four-gallon bin to put the compost in. Each week, Wild picks up the compost, weighs it and puts in a new liner for the bin. Then, he updates the client profiles so people know how much compost they are diverting from landfills, and takes it to Shiloh Field, the Denton Bible Church Community Garden where he is working to turn the compost into soil.
“We take it and I combine it with a lot of horse stable bedding and mix it up and create a finished product that should be available for sale back to our members by spring of next year,” Wild said. “The goal is to be able to offer it back to the community in retail and donations for larger operations.”
While at capacity for residential clients until the beginning of next year, Compost Denton is looking to work with small businesses and restaurants that want to compost. Miller said he is working on bin designs and strategic placements in kitchens to maximize the potential impact.
“We’re trying to figure out how we can design solutions that work well for businesses,” Miller said, “because there is a slight behavior change that needs to take place if a business wants to compost its organic waste.”
To continue expanding the business, Compost Denton will need to find more land to create the soil as they are outgrowing Shiloh Field. Eventually, they’ll need more labor and equipment as well to meet the demand and hope they can work on expansion by next year.
Stockdale, one of their 25 current residential customers, said she is excited to be able to start getting some soil back to use in her garden next spring, and when the company is able to expand, get more of her friends to join.
“I’m really, really happy that Compost Denton is doing this,” Stockdale said. “They’ve really filled a niche and I hope it grows. It’s a big investment in our environment.”
JENNA DUNCAN can be reached at 940-566-6889 and via Twitter at @JennaFDuncan.
