The O-Town Compost Community Cleans Up Lake Baldwin!

O-Town Compost is inspired by those in our community who feel it’s important to care for the surrounding ecosystem. If you feel an affinity for your local parks and city, join us this Saturday to cleanup Lake Baldwin!

Bring your friends and family, and we’ll provide the gloves, buckets, and pick-up sticks. Let’s keep Orlando beautiful!

Masks and social distancing are required!

To attend, please fill out this form
https://forms.gle/HUBjAT4GSUtGVFACA

Please also fill out this waiver
https://forms.gle/HUBjAT4GSUtGVFACA

2020: A Year To Remember

Goals Achieved

In spite of a global pandemic, O-Town Compost managed to recycle over 50,000 pounds of food scraps in its inaugural year. Our team grew from one to four members comprised of Orlando’s most passionate and dedicated individuals. The type of people who don’t think twice before reaching into a bucket full of decayed food waste to pull out a rubber band or a bread tie.

Most importantly, the Orlando community has shown us that they support our mission whole-heartedly. Over 140 residents and businesses have chosen to align themselves with our values to keep food scraps out of the landfill. Considering that it was our goal to reach 100 subscribers in our first year, we blew it out of the water!

Hardships

Although, 2020 wasn’t all cupcakes and rainbows. Unfortunately, the pandemic weakened the economy enough that a dozen or so subscribers had to cancel service. The sad truth in our current economic system is that recycling food waste is a luxury not a norm. This is why we are pushing local municipalities and government officials at the City of Orlando, Winter Park, and Orange County, to begin to make plans for food waste recycling infrastructure and policies mandating large generators of commercial food waste to divert organics from the waste stream.

Also, let’s not pretend that composting isn’t laborious. We have to thank all the OTC staff and volunteers who put their sweat into the semi-manual process of screening finished compost and emptying ASP bins with pitchforks. I know my back needs a vacation.

September Composting Site Tour

It gives us immense joy to show people how their banana peels, paper towels, and celery stocks become black gold compost. We return to the story time and time again of how increased soil health can fuel a local food abundance and create a resilient community.

In the Fall, we gave tours of our composting site that doubled as a Permaculture tour. It was demonstrated how humans can thrive in a biodiverse system and passively grow their own food.

At the composting site there’s a wide variety of edible and medicinal plants growing, such as moringa, papaya, Tandora cucumber, katuk, Okinawa spinach, and Barbados cherry. A dozen or so subscribers attended and brought their friends and family members to learn about the composting process. Some went home with plant cuttings that they could propagate in their own gardens. Soil is truly life, and our health starts with the health of our soil at the base of the food chain.

Ambitions for 2021

We believe that we’re on the precipice of something big here for 2021. If we continue to meet our goals, by the end of 2021, we will be capturing and recycling 5 tons of food scraps every week. Increasing our capacity by 5x. This, of course, will be difficult to achieve until we land a larger composting site, and the right equipment, but a round of investment is likely in store for 2021, so we can scale.

Right now we’re enjoying the journey while O-Town Compost is becoming a household name in Central Florida. Nonetheless, our eye if fixed on the prize, providing the capacity to recycle all of the organic waste out there in Orange County, and to sustain a zero waste society.

Composting 101

Charlie Pioli gives a presentation on food waste recycling, including vermacomposting and his reviews of different backyard composters. Why is composting better for the environment than standard recycling, and what is O-Town Compost able to accomplish on the community composting scene in Orlando, FL?

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

First Batch of Compost Will Be Distributed to Subscribers Early!

To show our immense appreciation for our loyal Orlando subscribers in the time of the COVID19 pandemic, we thought it was time to give back, and move everyone’s distribution date up early. Due the shutdown, more people are at home cooking and gardening, and it just makes sense. This doesn’t mean that our subscribers WON’T receive their regularly scheduled share 6-months from their subscription date either. Everyone who selected to “receive” their share of compost will still be delivered an additional 20 lbs 6 months from the date they hit “subscribe.” All we ask is to please empty the bucket, and put it back on your porch for us to collect during a normal pickup day, so we can keep reusing them. (Fun Fact: The 3.5-gallon compost buckets are old cream cheese icing buckets from Publix!)

Four hundred pounds of compost is going out this week and next to our subscribers who selected to receive their shares, and 400 pounds are going to Fleet Farming as a donation to their urban gardening efforts. A total of 800 pounds of O-Town Black Gold will be recycled into the community to improve our soil’s health! That’s right…Thanks to your banana peels, flower trimmings, and coffee grounds we have finished the composting process on our first batch of compost! We encourage you to use it in your vegetable gardens, as a potting mix, or just sprinkle it through your lawn to improve the seeding process.

Isn’t #CommunityComposting a beautiful thing?

Composting Continues

Well guys, we've made it to the middle of April. 

We're still operating (food waste collection services are considered waste haulers, and that is considered an essential service). 

Food waste is being created now more than ever (we hear folks asking for MORE buckets because they are cooking more frequently). 

Some of you are gardening (it’s a good time to create a victory garden and stay resilient to shocks in the food system like this . 

Amazing connections are occurring (keep up the good work, everyone!).

We send all our best to the O-Town community - 

Orlando's Community Composter Diverts 2 Tons!

Thank you to our community composters that helped us achieve this milestone!

O-Town Compost Celebrates Its First Ton Diverted!

Thank you to all our awesome subscribers and customers who are committed to food waste recycling in Orlando, Florida !!! It’s an exciting journey to be a waste warrior.