compost

Want to Compost in Chicago?

It’s hard to believe we have been using a composting service in the city for almost 5 years now. And I have a lot of content on it!

I have been using Healthy Soil Compost since 2016 at home and even had them compost at my wedding in 2018.

For those of you who are interested in starting a compost journey, I wanted to pull together a little guide on all the options for composting services in Chicago I am familiar with. Each provides you with a 5-gallon bucket for you to fill up that can be picked up at different intervals (besides Block Bins, see below).

Healthy Soil Compost

  • Services:
    • Commercial
    • Residential
    • Events & Seasonal (yard waste, pumpkins, Christmas trees)
  • Service Area:
    • Most Chicago neighborhoods from North Lakeview to Logan Square/Hermosa. West to Garfield Park, East to the lake, and South to Hyde Park/Woodlawn.
    • Beverly and Mt. Greenwood
  • Residential Pricing:
    • Monthly: $20 (When I signed up, it was $15 a month and I still get charged that rate!)
    • Bi-Monthly: $30
    • Weekly: $40
  • Extra Benefits:
    • Finished compost
  • Restaurants that Compost:
  • Farmers Market Compost Collection:

The Urban Canopy

I have had experience with Urban Canopy composting at some events for a non-profit board I used to serve on. They also have a CSA, which is awesome!

  • Services:
    • Residential
    • Commercial
    • Events
  • Service Area:
  • Residential Pricing:
    • Monthly: $15
    • Bi-Weekly: $25
    • Weekly: $35
  • Extra Benefits: 
    • Finished compost
    • $5 voucher to a local farmers market or a $5 voucher to one of the restaurants that also compost with Urban Canopy
  • Where Does it Go?
    • Their farm in Englewood and local compost-processing facility
  • Farmers Markets

WasteNot Compost

Chicago’s first and only zero-emission compost collection service.

  • Services
    • Residential
    • Multi-Unit
    • Commercial
  • Service Area
  • Residential Pricing
    • Weekly: $10 per service ($40)
    • Bi-Weekly: $12 per service ($24)

Collective Resource

  • Services
    • Events
  • Service Area
  • Residential Pricing
    • Weekly: $10.50 per week ($42)
    • Bi-weekly: $15.50 per week ($31)
    • Monthly: $20.50
  • Restaurants that Compost:
  • See a full list of organizations that compost with Collective Resource here

Block Bins

  • Services:
    • Neighborhood composting (set up a bit differently than the others, Block Bins allows you to compost with your neighbors using a large 35-gallon, locked bin placed in the alley)
  • Service Area:
  • Residential Pricing:
    • $10/month: 5 gallons of waste per month (~1-2 person household)
    • $15/month: 10-15 gallons per month (~3-4 person household)
    • $20/month: 15-20 gallons per month (~5-6 person household)
  • Where Does it Go?
    • An industrial composting facility in Harborview

So there you have it! Do you want to start composting?

Food Aversions and Food Waste

During the first trimester of pregnancy, your body does a lot of weird things and your stomach and taste buds start to betray you.

For a handful of weeks, I barely wanted to eat anything. Everything was just so unappealing.

With my ever-changing palette, I had to come to terms with something that I do my very best to avoid in my non-pregnant life: wasting food.

Many times I would try to eat some of the lovely home-cooked meals my husband made for me and many times I would poke at it with my fork and end up eating a bowl of Cheerios instead.

I would often be over-zealous and prepare more food than my stomach could manage, leaving a lot left behind. Our compost service benefited the most in the first couple of months.

While I felt pretty guilty that I couldn’t always eat what was put in front of me, I had to learn to accept that this was going to happen. With my hormones all over the map, I couldn’t really control what I wanted to eat one day and not the next.

Luckily, I am now in the second trimester and my appetite has vastly improved. I can eat vegetables again! A miracle!

Patience

If you know me personally, patient most likely wouldn’t be your adjective of choice to describe me.

But I have been thinking lately about patience and that is mostly because I started a new job that I am very very excited about. I graduated 6 years ago and I have been through 4 jobs since then. Some were good and some were not, but I continued to search, to network, and to interview.

I got rejected A LOT. Since 2012, I have applied for 393 jobs and received 60 first-round interviews. That is a success rate of 15%. It was disheartening and frustrating, but I had to be patient. It was worth the wait.

Patience is also an important trait when dealing with any environmental/waste/green tasks. Our society has pushed instant gratification on us. We use something once and then throw it out. We want something new, we buy it right now and get it shipped to our door the next day.

It seems counterintuitive to go against this, and harder, more difficult, and inconvenient, but it makes a bigger impact.

Take an extra two seconds and collect your kitchen scraps for a compost service.

compost bin

Search secondhand services for exactly what you are looking for and sell your items on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and ThredUp. Or donate your stuff.

thredup

Fix up what you already have whether it is a chair, jeans, or your dress pants,

alterations

Collect personal care products and plastic bags, save your beyond repair clothing, take in your running shoes to be recycled, and return wire hangers from the cleaners.

credo dropoff1

Grow your own vegetables or join a CSA.

Plants 2

Shave with a safety razor.

safetyrazor4

Take action on things you don’t want like junk mail, mail not addressed you and solicitations.

Old tenant's mail

Choose the slower shipping option.

All of these things take TIME, but I value the outcome more than the time it takes to bring my plastic bags back to the grocery store.

It takes patience to do these things instead of just throwing stuff into the trash can. Sure, that is easier and sure, that is faster.

But properly taking care of what comes in and out of your life is worth the wait.

What Will Happen to Chicago’s Worm Farm?

For the past three or so years, almost every banana peel, eggshell or orange rind that came out of our household has made its way to one urban worm breeding farm to become compost via our composting service Healthy Soil Compost.

compost bin

The remnants of tonight’s dinner end up in our bucket.

That worm farm is Nature’s Little Recyclers. They take my food waste and turn it into worm castings to be added back to the soil as a rich growing medium, they create local jobs, and save quite literally tons of food waste from landfills.

I owe them a lot.

Unfortunately, as with anyone trying to save the world, a few barriers are standing in their way.

Right now that barrier is the City of Chicago, who is shutting down Nature’s Little Recyclers last location due to lack of a permit and cease-and-desist orders. The laws in this city are not made for small business composters.

So Nature’s Little Recyclers started a petition to tell the Chicago City Council and the mayor to make it easy to compost in the city. Since the petition started 2 weeks ago, it has received over 4,400 signatures.

So if you compost in the city or support updating our laws to accommodate urban composting please sign the petition here.

Learn more about the situation with recent news coverage:

Compost 2018

2018 has been a good year for us and bringing our food scraps back to the soil in the form of compost. Last year, in 2017, we collected over 215 pounds.

This year, we collected 227 pounds! And that was just from our home 5-gallon bucket!

Not only did we continue using Healthy Soil Compost for our monthly pick up service, but we also used them to compost at our wedding in June.

Our wedding and our 145 guests kept 139 pounds of organic material out of the landfill, which produced 10 pounds of finished compost and 100 pounds of greenhouse gas carbon emissions.

Also, just recently, I finally asked my place of employment why we had compostable plates/cups/bowls, but nowhere to compost to them. They are currently reaching out to compost pick up services around the city.

work compost

So that’s it for 2018!

Since we have started collecting in July of 2016, we have kept over 504 pounds of organic materials from the fate of the landfill. Which is really amazing when you think about it.

Ending the year on a high note!

Wedding Food Waste: How Much Did We Collect?

As you may know, one of my wedding vendors was a compost collection service.

Which is totally not normal and really awesome. 

Healthy Soil Compost, the company that has come to my apartment every month for the past 2 years to pick up my 5-gallon bucket, got to be a part of my wedding day.

compost HSC

Working with my caterers, food waste was collected in larger rollaway totes, rather than my usual 5-gallon bucket. Scraps were collected in the kitchen, as well as out in the reception space.

compost at wedding

Me, in my wedding dress, and one of the Healthy Soil Compost containers.

Having the opportunity to support my values on my wedding day was extremely important to me. When else do you get to craft an event that is truly all about you and what you believe in?

139 pounds of organic material

At the end of the night, Healthy Soil had collected 139 pounds of organic material that would have otherwise gone straight into a landfill.

10 pounds of finished compost

Our 139 pounds of organic material (aka tacos) will produce 10 pounds of finished compost to go back into the earth and grow more goodies.

100 pounds of GHG

This entire process saved 100 pounds of greenhouse gas carbon emissions from being emitted into the atmosphere.

Small changes can make a difference. Now, go compost for your next event!

Meet The Less-Wasteful Vendors of My Wedding

It’s the nitty-gritty of wedding planning. Less than 30 days left until the big day.

We got our marriage license, we are making our final payments, and I am picking up my dress in 2 weeks. Crazy crazy!

I wanted to recap some of the unconventional vendors I am including in one of the most important days of my life and why it’s important to support these types of businesses.

My wedding is by no means zero waste, but I did my best to include more conscious decisions while planning and even applied it to my shower and suggested it to my maid of honor for my bachelorette party (We shall see how she does. Love you Britni!).

You kind of need to pick and choose where you really want your less-waste decisions to shine or it will drive you insane. For instance, I would rather have something visible like composting than something no one would notice like using all natural, vegan, organic makeup.

So here it is.

My Less Wasteful Wedding Vendors

(And Also Those That Aren’t) **

**I have said this before, obviously, the most zero waste option would be just get married at City Hall in an outfit you already own and be done with it, but I am having a ceremony, with a reception, with guests, in a large city. #sorrynotsorry

Venue: The Joinery

I booked our wedding at the Joinery well before it became a green event space backed by the Green Wedding Alliance. The building was saved from demolition, therefore keeping construction materials out of the landfill.

the joinery front

Source: The Joinery

Dress: House of Brides Couture

My dress is not vintage or reused, but bought from a standard bridal store chain. I had mulled about doing a vintage dress but ended up falling in love with one at a store on a whim visit with a friend from out of town. So that was that.

Hair

It’s my stylist that has been cutting my hair since I was sixteen years old. She uses standard hair products, so no “natural” hairspray over here.

Makeup

All regular. Full of chemicals.

Florist: Avium Flowers

I previously posted about my wedding flowers from Avium here. This small, women-owned business will locally grow and put together my wedding flowers. Afterward, the flowers that don’t get taken home will be composted.

avium flowers2

Source: Avium Flowers

Food: Big Star

Instead of the standard wedding fare, we opted for food we knew our guests and ourselves would be excited to eat. It was soothing to know that one of the biggest pieces of your wedding budget was going to go towards food people have literally been talking about since we signed the contract a year ago.

We are having tacos. That’s right. Big Star tacos. 🌮

big star tacos

Source: Big Star

They were happy to accommodate my requests for no straws or plastic water cups. Additionally, since Chicago has strict laws about donating prepared food, Big Star agreed to provide my guests with takeout containers to take some tacos home, if there are even any left.

If there are some taco stragglers at the end of the night, they will be composted. More about that below.

Waste Disposal: Healthy Soil Compost

My normal compost pickup service also composts at events, so it was only natural that I chose Healthy Soil. They will drop off and pick up the bins, hauling whatever is left over to be eaten by worms and turned into fertilizer.

compost HSC

Source: Healthy Soil Compost

Invitations: Minted

While I opted to use an online service for our invitations, I did pay the additional fee to use recycled paper and print an extremely tiny, barely visible, recycled paper symbol on the back of them.

Day of Coordination: Prickly Pear Events

All of my vendors are then being coordinated by Green Wedding Alliance member, Prickly Pear Events, who so far has kept me thinking of different ways to incorporate less waste into my event.

That’s it! Catch up on the rest of my wedding planning journey with Waste Not Want Not Wedding.

Shaking Up Wasteful Office Culture

I am finding it really hard to send an email.

It is not just any email.

It’s an email to facilities management at work.

I’ve noted before that our office provides compostable plates and bowls, but nowhere to actually compost them.

 

work compost

I usually smuggle my compostables home to compost

 

It seems very counterintuitive and a bit greenwashy to me (Look at us! We offer compostable plates! Oh la la!). It is a step in the right direction, but providing compostable plates without somewhere to compost them is like providing real plates and silverware, but nowhere to wash them. It totally negates the point.

So I have been working up the courage to send an email to facilities management, but building up courage has been a slow trickle, with renewed aspiration here and there when I see the wrong things in the recycle bin or when people compliment me on BYOP (bringing my own plate).

 

BYOP

My parents were cleaning out their kitchen and came across this plate I painted at a pottery place. Since my name was on the back of it, I figured I’d take it and make it my work plate.

 

I know what the email needs to say:

  • There is no point in having compostable plates/bowls without providing composting service (but I also don’t want them to think, “Oh okay, we will order styrofoam then!”)
  • Provide the benefits of composting and why putting compostable items in the landfill doesn’t work
  • Provide resources to composting services in Chicago (this is a larger building, so not sure how waste management on a single floor scale works…)
  • Discuss what is recyclable from the building’s recycling hauler and how we can educate the staff about what belongs in the recycling bin and what does not
  • Explain that I would be willing to work with them to make our office a greener place to spend 40+ hours of your week

Despite knowing what the contents of this email will be, I am more afraid of the response I will get.

Will I immediately be shot down? My email promptly deleted and never even responded to? 

I have no idea and that is why I have not sent it yet (or even written it).

I am going to do it though. I promise.

I risk nothing besides the office thinking I am a crunchy composting hippie, which is fine because I would totally love to be labeled that.

Have you ever tried to green your office? Any suggestions or tips for writing this email? Any help would be appreciated!

Paper: Compost or Recycle?

A while ago, a friend asked me which was better, composting paper or recycling it.

the funnies

That is a really good question that required me to do a bit of research.

And the answer is that it depends.

Paper is not infinitely recyclable (unlike glass), it’s fibers eventually degrade in quality after being recycled 5-7 times. Printer and office paper require strong fibers, so its fibers have only been recycled a couple times. Newspaper, wrapping paper, and tissue paper, on the other hand, can use lower quality fibers.

Here is what should be recycled and what should be composted and in what situation:

Recycle

  • Glossy magazines, advertisements, and catalogs (these are more likely to contain toxic additives you won’t want in our compost if you are using it to grow produce)
  • Office paper
  • Sticky notes

In general, paper that is of higher quality should be recycled so that it can be used again, thus saving resources compared to virgin paper production.

Compost

  • Paper products that are soiled with food waste, like napkins, paper towels, and paper plates (they can’t be recycled anyway)
  • Newspaper
  • Tissues
  • Brown paper bags with food stains from takeout
  • Greasy pizza box
  • Shredded paper (even if it is shredded office paper, it cannot be recycled)

As for composting, it is better to add lower quality paper that is less likely to be recycled. In addition, adding paper is good for the health of your compost pile, helps keep it from being smelly, and absorbs water.

Unfortunately, some paper products can’t be recycled or composted and have to be reused or ultimately end up in the trash can.

Landfill

  • Plastic coated paper products like coffee cups
  • Glittery, glossy, and metallic wrapping paper
  • Glittery tissue paper

So there you go!

There are some other things to remember though.

  1. When buying paper products, opt for post-consumer recycled content to save as many trees as possible. There needs to be a demand for it!
  2. Soley composting high-quality paper keeps those good fibers from the production stream, meaning there is less recycled paper to work with, also meaning more virgin resources being used.

 

Resources

A Year of Collecting Food Scraps in A Bucket

It has been my first full year of composting, or really, my first full year of saving food scraps and keeping them in a bucket on my fire escape until it gets picked up to be made into compost.

compost1

Each month before I set my bucket out on the front step, I used my hanging scale to weigh it, diligently tracking my results in a spreadsheet.

compost-bucket4

And now, here we are, twelve months later, and we have successfully diverted a total of 215 pounds (plus some here or there) from the landfill!

compost bucket7

It is pretty impressive and I am very proud of myself for this accomplishment!

Here’s the month by month breakdown of our food waste poundage.

  • January 15.5 lbs
  • February 17.22 lbs
  • March 12 lbs
  • April 18.71 lbs
  • May 8.8 lbs
  • June 20.44 lbs
  • July 22.84 lbs
  • August 25.4 lbs
  • September 19.74 lbs
  • October 21.61 lbs
  • November 18.5 lbs
  • December 14.58 lbs

That’s 287 pounds of organic matter going back into our soil and helping plants thrive. Wahoo!