Each month, we will highlight community heroes that are making a difference in their communities and working to make their local environments cleaner and healthier.
This month, we are taking a look at Happy Earth Compost in TX!
Happy Earth Compost is a composting service based in Houston, TX, that provides a simple alternative to home composting, recycling, lowering your carbon footprint, and providing renewable power options for their customers. Biobag Associate spoke to Garrison Stamp with Happy Earth Compost about the organization. Their interview is transcribed below.
What led you to start your composting operation?
In 2019, I hit my tipping point when I realized my family was generating more than a bag of trash per day! This was after we separated out recycling. It hit me that if every family is doing the same, my three kids and future generations beyond them would be overwhelmed by trash.
I set out to find a way to reduce our footprint. After some research, I discovered composting. This could provide the solution. After a couple of weeks of trying it at home, I quickly realized that I didn’t want to do this on my own. I didn’t have the time, or the patience and I wanted to include as much as possible in the compost. For example, meat, dairy, and other products that are no-no’s for home composting.
I realized at this point, that if I was having this issue, there had to be others. After some research, my hunch was verified. So, I set about looking for a commercial compost company to gauge interest in helping residential customers compost. New Earth Compost was extremely excited with the concept and agreed to help us implement this service.
We are extremely excited to continue bringing this service to Houston and I hope you will join us in making the Earth a little bit happier!
(Jesse Stowers: Founder)
Who do you serve and how can people get in touch with you if they want to start composting?
We service greater Houston and Bryan and College Station with curbside composting. Commercially, we service Houston and the surrounding cities up to 85 miles out. We are also opening commercial service in Dallas and Fort Worth.
How much organic material do you typically take in on a weekly basis?
We are diverting 13-15 tons of organic material weekly!
Feel free to add any additional information about your operation as you see fit.
Launching in 2025 we will be launching carbon offsets, helping connect customers with renewable power, launching our TerraCycle partnership for hard to recycle items all in an effort to work towards a carbon neutral lifestyle.
Also fun fact, our warehouse worker Mike Broomfield is starting his 5th year with the company. He has been through all three warehouse moves is the backbone of the bucket washing operation. We did a fun exercise last week and found out that he has washed almost 250,000 buckets and barrels since he started working with us!
Happy Earth's residential curbside service: we swap your five-gallon bucket for a washed one and supply biobags with each service. You can sign up for weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly swaps. We also have a weekly service where we collect the waste and return the same bucket. A wonderful perk is being able to order compost 15 gallons at a time of finished compost to complete the cycle, dropped off with your next scheduled service.
Commercially, we service coffee shops, schools, grocery stores, commercial kitchens, corporate offices and campuses. Pretty much any businesses that generates food waste! Our primary goal is customer satisfaction while trying to provide an easy way for people to be sustainable.
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