Reducing Trash and Saving Money by Diverting Your Food Scraps

It’s hard to understand why composting is so necessary for the environment unless you take a trip to the face of the Orange County landfill. You witness the seemingly endless organic waste being dumped from dawn to dusk, the horrible smell of methane, and the loud beeping of bulldozers pushing trash into mountain-sized piles. It’s disheartening to say the least.

Our trash goes to OC Landfill on Young Pine Rd.

Compostable and recyclable material comprises between 70-80% of what goes to the landfill for disposal, meaning that the vast majority of what we throw away has a home either in your curbside recycling cart or with O-Town Compost’s composting program. This is the stuff that should be easy to divert right? Unfortunately, it takes a fair amount of education to teach people that there’s value in material even after it’s been consumed.

Also, not to let the corporate producers off the hook, but there needs to be greater extended producer responsibility (EPR). Some consumer products are just about impossible to recover, based on the way they’re made. DuPoint and Dow Chemical are great examples of Fortune 500 companies that would rather go to great lengths to get their single-use Styrofoam or plastic products labeled “recyclable” than actually shut down production and go a different route. Believe me, I’ve done consulting work for Dow Chemical’s Hefty Energy Bag Program, taking place in Cobb County, GA and Boise, ID, and it’s a perfect example of shucking responsibility and taking the path of least resistance to appear like they care about the environment. Green washing.

Despite the gloomy reality, a change is a comin’ (in the melody of Sam Cooke). The community composting movement is sweeping the country, and O-Town Compost is laying the ground work here in Central Florida to make it convenient for people to do the right thing with their food waste.

Right off the bat, after signing up, O-Town Compost subscribers experience firsthand a lighter and cleaner trash. The 96-gallon cart that most municipalities give their residents becomes WAY more than one needs. Less trash going to the landfill means huge cost savings for our local governments, longer life for our landfill, and a healthier environment. OTC’s subscribers should be rewarded with a reduced price on their trash services bill. For example, many Massachusetts towns have implemented a Pay As You Throw program, incentivizing its residents to waste less. Those who choose not to recycle their food waste, pay more. Basically, the program functions where households pay a variable rate for garbage collection depending on the size of the container they choose with the smaller the size being cheaper.

Saving $ with an OTC subscription

Having a black and gold O-Town Compost bucket not only reduces your volume of trash, but also saves subscribers money in the form of helping them buy groceries in right-sized quantities. Inevitably, everyone has food scraps that are inedible (banana peels, avocado pits, cucumber skins, etc), but it’s the uneaten leftovers and expired food sitting in the back of the fridge that really hurts the pocketbook. When you’re consciously separating your food waste from your trash, you begin to take note of your purchasing habits. “Maybe I shouldn’t have bought two containers of spinach, even though it was buy 2 for $5." Just one would’ve sufficed.”

In the next 10-20 years, our new norm will be to source separating food waste from the trash. For those who are getting on board early, it’ll be a lot less uncomfortable in the long run to adapt.

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.

O-Town Compost's Facts and Figures

Don’t discount O-Town Black Gold!

O-Town Compost Extends Its Reach Into College Park! (32804)!!!

“Let the food waste come.” - Charlie Pioli, Founder of O-Town Compost (with a battle-worn yet determined look on his face)

We’re excited to welcome the residents of zip code 32804 to our expanded service area! The College Park area is an example of how a number of people in the community came together to request food waste collection service, and O-Town Compost listened. It’s much more efficient, environmentally and economically, for O-Town Compost to run a route in an area with a greater client population.

We are hoping to be able to stretch farther in the next year, as we gain traction around Orlando. I have a feeling West Orlando (Winter Gardens, Windermere, Ocoee, etc) will be smelling O-Town Black Gold sometime during 2020.

Compost On Orlando!

College Park joins the community composting movement.

Happy Holidays From O-Town Compost

The holidays are meant to be a time for bringing people together, and showing appreciation for one another. We just want to say how immensely grateful we are for the support we’ve received from the people of Central Florida. Shout out to Orlando Permaculture, Ideas For US Orlando and UCF branches, East End Market, Cuplet Fern Chapter of Seminole County, Central Florida Fruit Society, friends and family who donated to our GoFundMe, and, of course, our subscribers!

We would be remiss if we didn’t say we have big plans for 2020. On the forefront of our minds is to continue our marketing campaign while educating people on the importance of composting and allow them to get over their unfounded fears of odors and rodents. Our other goals for The New Year involve;

• We want to increase the volume of food waste we’re receiving to multiple tons per week

• Making relationships with event planners, caterers, and venue spaces is essential for our Event Food Waste Recycling Program, and Zero Waste Event service

• Office spaces, who generate food waste and coffee grounds in their break rooms, would be an ideal fit for our service. These corporate partnerships give firms an outlet to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability (#practicewhatyoupreach)

• And lastly, residents on the West side of I-4, will soon be given the option to subscribe for O-Town Compost’s residential food waste collection service. We predict that by the summer of 2020, O-Town Compost will be servicing the zip codes of College Park, Windermere, Winter Gardens, Ocoee, and parts of Apoka.

Currently, our business operations are a new concept to a lot of people in Orlando. As people become more accustomed to us and our mission, we will inevitably grow. The 1,200 pounds of food waste we’ve diverted in the first month and a half of being open for business is really only a sliver of what’s out there. Cheers to a grimy and successful 2020!

Happy Holidays,

O-Town Compost Founder, Charlie Pioli

Why We Compost in Orlando

At O-Town Compost, we believe in a healthy balance of sustainable growth, which means giving back to the ecosystem what we take.

Orlando was once known for its agricultural presence. Citrus groves stretching as far as the eye could see, and farm land that sprawled from Apoka to Christmas with only a clump of buildings downtown to disrupt the horizon. Heck, I’ve even talked to an UCF alumni who remembers hitching up her horse outside her classrooms. Then, in 1971, Disney decided to open its famous resort and theme park, and the boom started.

Composting is a regenerative practice that allows us to bring back some of that natural habitat that we lost to development. Traditionally, compost replaces nutrients lost in the soil that were taken by the plants that eventually became our food. This fertility loss was replaced with organic compost after every crop cycle, introducing a cocktail of healthy bacteria and nutrients to began building the soil structure once again. It’s no joke when they say “it all starts with the soil.”

At the urban and suburban levels, reverting a small quarter acre lot from lawn to native habitat can invite bees, insects, butterflies, and birds completely altering the space to form a mini-ecosystem. That’s why at O-Town Compost we want to remain small and local to create mini-ecosystems of food waste collection to composting to growing food again. We are helping organizations and individuals change Orlando, pound by pound, into a hybrid between development and nature. A place where the ecosystem isn’t being wiped out, nor are the people being told to leave, but a coexistence. Sign up to start community composting in your neighborhood today!

Guiding Principles of Community Composting:

1. Resources recovered: Waste is reduced; food scraps and other organic materials are diverted from disposal and composted.

2. Locally based and closed loop: Organic materials are a community asset, and are generated and recycled into compost within the same neighborhood or community.

3. Organic materials returned to soils: Compost is used to enhance local soils, support local food production, and conserve natural ecology by improving soil structure and maintaining nutrients, carbon, and soil microorganisms.

4. Community-scaled and diverse: Composting infrastructure is diverse, distributed, and sustainable; systems are scaled to meet the needs of a self-defined community. (O-Town Compost is coming to West Orlando this summer!)

5. Community engaged, empowered, and educated: Compost programming engages and educates the community in food systems thinking, resource stewardship, or community sustainability, while providing solutions that empower individuals, businesses, and institutions to capture organic waste and retain it as a community resource.

6. Community supported: Aligns with community goals (such as healthy soils and healthy people) and is supported by the community it serves. The reverse is true, too; a community composting program supports community social, economic, and environmental well-being.