Listen to Charlie's latest episode interviewing The City of Winter Park’s Sustainability Director, Vanessa Balta Cook, and how local municipalities can team up with community composters.
Our Black Friday Deal for the Environment
Here at O-Town Compost, we aren’t a big fan of the consumer holiday, Black Friday. Although, this year, we are. It’s the day that people in West Orange County can join the movement to reduce waste going to the landfill, and join us in striving for a zero waste Central Florida.
The meaning behind Black Friday doesn’t have to be about mindless consumption. It can be about becoming closer as a community through recycling our food scraps!
O-Town Compost's vision for the future
It’s been seven months since O-Town Compost entered the Orlando compost scene and we’re happy to say that we’ve been busy! Four tons of food scraps have been diverted from the landfill and turned into O-Town Black Gold thanks, in large part, to our dedicated subscribers!
The composting network has grown to a brigade of residential and a handful of commercial composters, such as offices, cosmetic retailers, and a coffee shop. We have our first Zero Waste Wedding under our belts, and were set to do more until the great COVID monster stomped through town, making social gatherings a thing of the past. Instead of immediately going into panic mode, we decided to diversify our offerings, and the On-Farm Composting Service was born to address the manure management headache that some stables and ranches constantly face. With our first stable on board, we are able to divert roughly 1,100 pounds of manure weekly, and create a beautiful soil amendment with a waste byproduct. A byproduct that some stable owners unfortunately pay to be hauled to the landfill.
Still, with all our small stories of success, we’re not quite comfortable yet. We have a long road ahead to fully address the waste problem and a lack of regenerative agriculture in Central Florida. Small isn’t necessarily bad for a community-focused business, but we’re going to need to grow in order to make serious strides in Orange County’s environmental landscape.
Right now we offer food waste collection in 16 zip codes in the county, or roughly a third of the land area. The public should look for an expansion in the next 6 months to West Orlando (West of I-4). When you request service on our contact page, we take note, and tally the number of requests from each zip code with the aim to get out there soon.
Another opportunity for growth is building our partner network. For example, stables, ranches, landscapers, etc. Any environmental operation that produces an organic byproduct that can be composted. We offer our partners a sharing of ownership on the finished compost product, and a solution to their waste byproduct. Imagine, a decentralized network of local composting facilities around Orange County, rather than the traditional approach in the waste industry, where there exists a giant, centralized facility. The benefits of small are that a smaller facility requires lower transportation costs, smaller operational costs when you are dealing with less waste, and, most importantly, the finished compost stays in the community! This, my friends, is how we break the hold of industrial agriculture and Big Waste.
We Need Your Support! Contact a Representative Today!
O-Town Compost has been on the Central Florida community composting scene for 7 months now, and has been steadily growing. Our goals are to grow food waste recycling infrastructure around the region, and support sustainable agriculture while doing so.
If you like what we do, please contact your local politician and let them know about your support for our mission. An individual’s voice goes a long way in letting our elected officials know that O-Town Compost is making a difference. You don’t have to be a subscriber to see that what we’re doing is moving the needle.
We appreciate you writing an individual heartfelt message, or you can use the template below:
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Subject: On Behalf of O-Town Compost, Orlando’s Community Composter
Dear [insert title and name of city representative],
I am writing to you as a concerned [name of municipality] resident, who strongly supports striking a balance between economic growth and environmental conservation. In [name of municipality], wasted materials are mounting daily while the infrastructure to recycle that waste is substantially inadequate. Single-stream recycling has proven to be an uphill battle, as Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) fight contamination and cannot find end-markets for their recyclables. According to multiple recent studies, 99 percent of truck loads carrying recyclables in the County were rejected at Waste Management’s MRF last year, and transported to the Orange County Landfill as a result. That means that nearly 100 percent of everything we put out to the curb as residents is ending up trashed.
This is a serious problem as the state is running out of landfill space. Fortunately, we have another option to reduce our waste footprint, and that is composting our organic waste, which makes up a sizable 40 percent of all that goes to the landfill. Moreover, adding organic waste to our landfills contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and CO2.
O-Town Compost is a small-scale community composter that is making a huge impact with its food scrap collection service, converting both pre- and post-consumer food waste (including meat and dairy wastes) into finished compost for local agriculture projects, such as Fleet Farming. Its mission is to grow into an organization that can handle the majority of Central Florida’s organic waste stream (including animal waste, such as horse manure), and transition the Orlando-area into a circular economy.
Small community composting businesses, similar to O-Town Compost, are active in cities and counties around the nation and are proving that they can move the needle in keeping food waste (as well as pet waste and other organic materials) out of our landfills. This frees up space for non-recyclable trash, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions produced by our landfills. O’Town Compost’s model (https://o-towncompost.com/ ) is similar to Bootstrap Compost in Boston, MA and Rust Belt Riders in Cleveland, OH.
I am writing to you today to voice my support for their efforts in our community, and I would like to see [name of municipality] find ways to incentivize residents and businesses to use their services. Ideally, food waste collection and composting should save cities money, while solving our landfill challenges and beautifying our green spaces with organic compost.
I greatly appreciate your attention to this issue.
Sincerely,
[Your name and address]
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Here is a list of some politicians you can email, depending on which area’s jurisdiction you fall under:
Winter Park, FL
Steve Leary - Mayor of Winter Park, FL - sleary@cityofwinterpark.org
Marty Sullivan - Commissioner Seat #1 - msullivan@cityofwinterpark.org
Shelia DiCiccio - Commissioner Seat #2 - sdeciccio@cityofwinterpark.org
Carolyn Cooper - Commissioner Seat #3 - ccooper@cityofwinterpark.org
Todd Weaver - Commissioner Seat #4 - tweaver@cityofwinterpark.org
City of Orlando, FL
Buddy Dyer - Mayor of Orlando, FL - buddy.dyer@orlando.gov
Jim Gray - District #1 - jim.gray@orlando.gov
Tony Ortiz - District #2 - tony.ortiz@orlando.gov
Robert Stuart - District #3 - robert.stuart@orlando.gov
Patty Sheehan - District #4 - patty.sheehan@orlando.gov
Regina Hill - District #5 - regina.hill@orlando.gov
Bakari Burns - District #6 - bakari.burns@orlando.gov
Orange County Unincorporated (To find your district & commissioner: https://www.orangecountyfl.net/BoardofCommissioners.aspx#.XrAW_6hKjD6)
Jerry Demings - Mayor of Orange County, FL - mayor@ocfl.net
Betsy VanderLey - District #1 - District1@ocfl.net
Christine Moore - District #2 - District2@ocfl.net
Mayra Uribe - District #3 - District3@ocfl.net
Maribel Gomez Cordero - District #4 - District4@ocfl.net
Emily Bonilla - District #5 - District5@ocfl.net
Victoria Siplin - District #6 - District6@ocfl.net