Listen to this great episode with Neil Seldman, one of the most knowledgeable people on the history of environmentalism and waste in the United States. This article, Monopoly and the U.S. Waste Knot, influenced Charlie to change the direction in his career, and focus on community composting as a solution to breakup the centralization of waste management.
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.