Food waste disposal company Compost Queen recently opened its latest facility and headquarters in Fort Collins and expects to divert more than 700 tons of waste annually. Chris Wood, editor and publisher of BizWest, joined KUNC’s Nikole Robinson Carroll to discuss the company and its strategies.
“It's a public benefit corporation, meaning that it's a corporation that's created to generate a positive social and public good,” Wood told KUNC. “Right now, they offer residential curbside pickup of food waste in Fort Collins and Timnath, and they also offer commercial pickup in Wellington, Windsor and Loveland. They have residential drop off sites in Loveland and Windsor and Fort Collins.”
The company is an example of community composting, which the EPA defines as a model that sources organic materials locally, engages the community in the composting process and uses the compost produced in local soils. Compost Queen collects and processes materials at four facilities. The new one is located on North College Avenue in Fort Collins on a family farm.
“It's called Back Gate Farm,” Wood said. “The compost that is created is actually used on the farm, and it (Compost Queen) has similar partnerships in place at its other locations.”
The Compost Queen website says farmers can access a "managed composting process" that "remediates pathogens and unwanted seeds to produce a high quality soil amendment and fertilizer."
Residential customers can also obtain compost for their home gardens from Compost Queen.
"Your food scraps go to improving local soils and growing high quality crops right where you live," the company's drop-off composting page says. "The best part? You get access to high quality food scrap compost."
Compost Queen was launched in 2018 by Jamie Blanchard-Poling. The service picks up food waste from homes, taking it to their facilities and composting it. But they're very particular about what they collect. No compostable bags, no plastic, no bag ties or raw meats, for example.
“And if they find any contaminants, by the way, then the whole bin must go to the landfill,” Wood told KUNC.
Compost Queen recently won a grant from the Front Range Waste Diversion Program. Now, it's using some advanced composting technology from a company called Sustainable Generation. It's called covered aerated static pile technology. It essentially allows for rapid composting at high temperatures while controlling odors and eliminating possible pathogens in food waste.
More companies are now offering curbside food waste pickup along the Front Range.
“Some cities contract for curbside pickup with a waste company,” Wood said. “Some cities such as Boulder even require composting bins at businesses.”
A lot of that waste is composted by A1 Organics, a large volume composter of organic waste for the region, headquartered in Eaton.
“But the problem is very big," Wood said, "and smaller scale operations such as Compost Queen are being encouraged, including through recent changes in Colorado law that exempt small quantity facilities from requirements such as environmental impact statements.”
The National Environmental Education Foundation estimates 30% to 40% of food goes uneaten in the US with food waste, making up 24% of items that wind up in landfills globally.
