Casella Waste Systems is expanding its reach into the compost industry. The company purchased Moretown, VT-based Grow Compost on Sept. 1. The acquisition could raise concerns about consolidation in Vermont’s nascent compost industry. Grow and Casella were the only two companies that offered compost hauling services to most of the state, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The deal gives Casella further control over an aspect of the waste stream in Vermont. Since July 2020, Vermont has banned food scraps from landfills and has, with some exceptions, required trash haulers to offer compost pickup service to nonresidential customers and larger rental units.
Casella, a $3.8 billion company that owns the state’s only landfill, sought to delay the implementation of that law last spring, citing challenges stemming from the pandemic. They were ultimately unsuccessful. Grow Compost, on the other hand, spent years preparing for the new law, investing in infrastructure to collect organic waste from around the state.
But Lisa Ransom, co-founder of Grow, said their aspirations to serve the entire state outgrew their capacity. “It had to be an effort by a larger group of people, and we’ve talked for a long time with our fellow composters and other haulers about how we were going to do that,” Ransom said. “We’ve been having these conversations with a lot of different companies for a long time, and this is the one that just fell into place.”