Compost with Colleagues

We’re a few weeks into the New Year, which means many of us have already amended, adjusted, or perhaps abandoned, our New Year’s Resolutions. On the bright side, January is still a great time to make some changes to your routine, or maybe, to help set some goals or develop a new habit for your office space. I - with a little bit of bias- suggest you try out composting at work.

My office has been composting their food scraps for a few years now. It’s a simple system. We have two food scrap collection buckets, one on each side of the building where food scraps may accumulate. We have a voluntary rotation where a different individual is responsible for taking the food scraps out to the compost pile each day of the week- I take out the food scraps on Mondays. To balance out the food scraps, our office collects paper towels from the staff bathrooms to serve as the carbon source, or the “browns”. This system works because food scraps don’t stay in one place for very long, so they don’t have a chance to get icky in the office space. There are plenty of people interested in taking out the food scraps, and our leadership is very supportive.

If you are interested in bringing composting to your office, here are a few tips/ best practices that I would recommend.

1). Arrange a System. Evaluate how much participation you think you'll have in a compost collection. You'll also need to determine if you want to have a compost bin or pile onsite, or if a food scrap collection service would work better for your team. With a compost bin, it can be cheaper to maintain, but you need space and you will need to maintain it with regular turning and monitoring. If you need a compost bin, make a budget to be able to propose; there are lots of great bin options out there for any budget. Here are some bins that our staff has used if you are looking for some inspiration! A collection service is set up with a food scrap hauler, who will schedule with your office to regularly pick up food scraps to compost offsite. This requires less maintenance and space, but will have some service fees associated. If you need a collection service, you will also want to get quotes and determine which collection works best for your team. You can find a list of Hamilton County food scrap haulers on the Hamilton County ReSource website here.

2). Talk to your leadership. Before bringing anything into a workspace, it’s a good idea to make sure your leadership team approves. To help make your appeal, bring a short proposal showing how the system will work, and request any necessary resources, whether you need staff time, space, or financial resources to make it happen. If your leadership is not very familiar with composting, it could help to bring it up to your office’s “Green Team” if they have one. Bringing compost to an office space can help with meeting in-office sustainability goals, and you can weigh your food scraps to have metrics to show for your efforts at the end of the year.

3). Communicate, communicate, communicate! Once you get any needed approval and are ready to start your new compost collection- find a way to best communicate with those participating. Whether it’s creating a Microsoft Teams or a Slack channel, setting up an email chain, or just posting notes on your kitchen scrap collector, figure out what works well to communicate with your team. You’ll want ways to share updates- or perhaps give advice or gentle correction on some well-meaning items that don’t belong in the compost. It is also helpful to give a space for coworkers to ask their questions about what can or can’t go in the bin or create a designated point of contact. Communication will be essential to ensuring the long-term success of your collection.

Composting in your office over the course of the year can have a big impact, and the diversion adds up quickly. It teaches others in your organization how compost works, and may inspire those who were on the fence to start collecting their scraps at home. If you are working in a school, check out our blog post about composting at your school! Also, if you are a business in Hamilton County, Ohio, we would love for you to reach out to our team for some help or additional resources in setting up your compost system! Best of luck, and happy composting! 

Compost Blogger: Sam Goubeaux