O-Town Compost and Tavistock Partner to Increase Food Waste Diversion in Lake Nona

O-Town Compost and the Tavistock Development Company (TDC) have created a partnership to benefit the Lake Nona community. The TDC is deeply rooted in the heart of Lake Nona’s planning, design, finance, construction, and development. At their core they build a culture of creativity, innovation, and collaboration, while striving for excellence. This philosophy is evident throughout the businesses, buildings, homes, families, and communities that make up Lake Nona. Through their innovative designs, ideas, and city planning, Lake Nona is a shining example of a community designed to be healthier, safer, smarter, and more sustainable.

O-Town Compost added Lake Nona, and the towns south of the Beachline, to their residential and commercial composting service area early in 2024. Tavistock and O-Town Compost are committed to providing the businesses, residents and guests of Lake Nona a progressive experience that includes the benefits of living, working, and visiting a community that strives to provide all the necessities of healthy and sustainable living. Both companies believe that one of the cornerstones of sustainable living is composting. The simple act of separating organic waste, diverting it from the landfill, and instead, returning it to the farms to grow more food, is one of the simplest, easiest and most powerful acts of sustainability one can make. Making this process attainable and affordable in today’s world is the challenge companies like Tavistock and O-Town Compost are looking to solve.

By combining their resources, the Tavistock Development Company and O-Town Compost have developed a community-wide composting initiative. This program is available to all residents in the Lake Nona community and makes composting easy, attainable, and affordable to everyone. The goal of this initiative is to divert and compost as much of the organic waste in Lake Nona as possible, and in doing so, making it one of the most sustainable cities in Florida and a blueprint for master designed communities everywhere.

Through the the support and partnership of the Tavistock Development Company, and in order to encourage the growth and acceptance of composting throughout the community, O-Town Compost is able to offer all Lake Nona residents a unique, tiered price for its composting services. At sign up, new subscribers will receive a complementary O-Town Kitchen Caddy, complete with a roll of Eco-Safe compostable liners, to go along with their standard 5-Gallon Bucket that contains a secure lid and a compostable liner. Included in the service is access to the O-Town customer portal and shop, which offers a variety of sustainable products, including compostable liners, alternative single-use utensils and dinnerware, stickers, yard signs, swag, and of course, compost, all delivered directly to customers doors. Also included is access to O-Town’s special recycling service that easily allows customers to order a pickup of batteries, textiles, lightbulbs, plastic film, paint, books, small electronics, and cords and wires, for a small additional fee.

Lake Nona residents are now able to subscribe to this service for the low price of $22/month for weekly service x1 bucket and $30/month for weekly service x2 buckets. This pricing is only available in the Lake Nona area and only because of this unique partnership. It is because of this partnership and the long-term commitment to this program by both the Tavistock Development Company and O-Town Compost that this price is expected to go down in the future. This is a resident subscription, density tiered, pricing structure. The more residents that subscribe to the service, the less the service will cost. At present there are 23 subscribers in the Lake Nona area. When the number of subscribers hits 50, the price will drop, and at 100 subscribers the price will fall again.

As you can see from the photos below, this partnership is actively engaged in the program: it values in the initiative, getting the word out, and educating the community about the value of composting and the value of the service. The Tavistock Development Company and O-Town Compost are dedicated to helping the residents of Lake Nona live in one of the most sustainable cities in America. To do this they are striving to get as many O-Town Compost black buckets next to as many front doors in Lake Nona as they can on collection day.

COMPOSTING IS NATURE’S WAY OF RECYCLING, AND IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL ACTIONS WE CAN TAKE TO REDUCE TRASH IN LANDFILLS, ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE, AND BUILD HEALTHY COMMUNITIES.

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Now Accepting Meat, Fish, and Dairy

For those who wonder what we accept, remember this slogan:

“If it grows, it goes.”

Basically, if it grew out of the ground, we will accept it in our compost program. The website’s FAQ page does a pretty good job at answers any questions you may have, but always feel free to contact us at info@o-towncompost.com.

Things We Do Compost:

• Fruits and veggies

• Coffee grounds, filters, and tea bags

• Paper towels, napkins, and paper plates

• Egg shells

• Pasta and grains

• Meat and bones

• Cheese and other dairy products

Things We Do Not Compost:

• Fruit stickers (please remove from produce before composting)

• Pet waste including excrement or food

• Paper cups

• Kleenex or facial tissues

• Any type of plastics including most bio-degradable plastics

• Pesticide infused products for killing rodents or cockroaches

The law according to O-Town Compost.

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.

The Community Composting Movement Is Gaining Momentum

The founding of O-Town Compost was heavily influenced by other community composting operations around the country, like Bootstrap Compost in Boston, Let Us Compost in Athens, GA, and Rust Belt Riders in Cleveland. All are great examples of small local composters with a long list of residential subscribers who have been diverting massive quantities of food waste and making a positive contribution to their surrounding cities. The opportunity exists in every U.S. city, where successful organics programs are typically nowhere to be found, and the local governments are more focused on improving lagging recycling programs. Food waste management has been left to the private sector to deal with in large part.

Typically, the large waste haulers (a.k.a. Big Waste), like Waste Management and Republic Services, would get involved in the action, but since they have a constant inflow of trash into their landfills and incinerators, they’re okay with the status quo. Food waste is heavy after all, and the more tonnage coming into the landfill means more revenue. Although, it’s doubtful that these big companies will remain on the sidelines for long. In the meantime, small micro-haulers are carving out a niche in cities across the East Coast, South, and Mid-West.

Community Composters around the U.S.

The Institute of Local Self Reliance (ILSR) has been an instrumental part of the composting movement with their “Composting For Community” Podcast, and the organization of webinars and conferences to bring the nation’s decentralized composters together for sharing knowledge. One of ILSR’s feature writers, Neil Seldman, has been a force in his activism and criticism against Big Waste for years. Mr. Seldman’s article in December of 2018, “Monopoly and the U.S. Waste Knot” inspired O-Town Compost’s founder to look differently at the waste industry he was part of and at current U.S. recycling practices. Ultimately, recycling has suffered since the introduction of single stream, which was a recycling program talked up by large waste haulers looking to vertically integrate their collection systems. If you’re interested in making the greatest environmental impact, diverting food waste is the clear winner over standard recycling. Thus, O-Town Compost was born with food waste in mind, and the wind at our backs. Seemingly, there is unimaginable potential to repair Orlando’s eco-system and shift away from landfill waste management in Orange County, FL.