When most of us think about composting our food scraps, we probably envision a bin of banana peels and coffee grounds taking up precious real estate in the backyard. But today, there’s another option to keep organic matter out of landfills, where it leaches climate-change-fueling methane gas into the atmosphere: centralized compost collection.
Compost Colorado (CoCo) is one of a few local companies that fall into this category. Similar to the way that trash and recycling waste is handled, the company’s team picks up food waste (weekly collections start at $33 per month) and takes it to a dedicated location for processing. And now, that dedicated location is about to be a lot closer to home thanks to an influx of cash from the state that will allow CoCo to build the Mile High City’s first major composting facility.
It’s a big step forward for CoCo founder and CEO Van Fussell, who started the business four years ago after moving to Denver and finding out his apartment building, and many suburbs, didn’t have composting services. “Composting is one of the easiest and most effective ways to fight climate change. It not only prevents greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, but it actually creates a living compost soil that sequesters carbon from the atmosphere,” Fussel says. CoCo returns that carbon-trapping agent to its members (who can use it in their gardens or on their lawns), closing the loop and creating a circular economy for food waste. “It turns a problem into a solution,” Fussel says.
CoCo works with residences in suburbs like Arvada and Littleton and fills in the gaps left by the city of Denver’s own program, Denver Composts, which launched in 2017 to serve households in city limits with seven or fewer units. Despite having more than 30,000 users who pay $29 per quarter for weekly pickups, Denver Composts doesn’t pick up from restaurants and large apartment complexes.