Arizona is the nation’s most food wasteful state, and when food waste decomposes in our landfills it creates large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.
On Thursday evening, Scottsdale Community College hosted two showings of “Kiss the Ground”, a documentary film narrated by actor and environmental activist Woody Harrelson.
The film focuses on the concept of actually reversing climate change through regenerating the Earth’s soil and using farming methods that allow plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.
Participants learned that composting is a way to both remove food from the waste stream and regenerate soils at the same time.
Attendees also met and were able to ask questions of J.D. Hill, who started a business in 2013 called Recycled City, which offers Valley residents a convenient way to turn their food waste into compost.
After graduating from ASU, Hill wanting to become a small local farmer, but realized the obstacles to effectively selling the produce were too numerous to make a practical living.
He told Northeast Valley News that around 2010, businesses like Compost Cab in Washington, D.C. and Compost Now in North Carolina started to pick up and compost food waste in their respective cities, but those businesses simply created the compost for resale.
Hill realized that by using the compost to grow vegetables instead of selling it, he could create a full-circle business cycle which supported local farming by selling the produce to his subscribers.
“I’m the only company in the country that does the full-circle,” Hill told NEVN about his business. “So, we collect it, we compost it, we use all the compost on our farm, we don’t sell any of the compost. And then we grow the vegetables with the compost and we sell the vegetables back to the house doing the right thing with their food waste.”
From Queen Creek to Cave Creek, Recycled City currently offers pick-up services to around 3,500 Valley households across a 1,200 square mile area, hauling over six tons of compostable materials per day to the company’s 16.5-acre farm in South Phoenix.
They accept all types of food waste and many kinds of paper products as well as certain amounts of yard waste at the request of the client.
Recycled City is the only company in the valley that does residential pick-up.
They also service commercial accounts like Chick-fil-a, CVS and REI headquarters, Fairmont Princess Resort, Marriot Hotels, Mayo Clinic, and Sprouts, among others.
Customers who subscribe to Recycled City’s pick-up service can decide to receive a quantity of free compost or an amount of complimentary produce in accordance to their agreement. The company also swaps out all residential buckets or commercial bins with a clean container on pick-up days.
Hill said that anyone can sign up to purchase produce by subscribing to their “Farm Box” program.
“When you sign up for a certain Farm Box subscription, we give you the compost service (residential pick-up) for free,” Hill said.
Those who are interested in doing their part to remove food from the waste stream, but aren’t sure about accumulating it in the conventional, covered, five-gallon pail have a more convenient option in the Mill kitchen bin.
“We’ve recently made a partnership with this company called Mill, who makes this bin that goes in your kitchen, and it grinds and dries everything, every night. So, there’s never any smells, you cannot have a fruit fly, it’s really easy to scrape your plate into. And it just gets all the family members…everybody in the household participating,” Hill said.
Anyone interested in taking advantage of Recycled City’s services can start doing their part to remove food waste from landfills and reduce greenhouse gasses by signing up for a free, no-risk, two-week trial.
Nancy McCrory is one Valley resident who signed up for the free trial.
“The idea of creating compost was interesting to me…but I’m not going to do it myself,” McCrory said. “I don’t use my garbage disposal very much anyway, so I was throwing my food scraps into the trash can. So, having someplace else to throw them and have them do some good was very intriguing to me.”
