Community Hero March 2025: CompostNow
Welcome to Biobag's Community Heroes series!
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 CompostNow in NC, GA, and OH!
CompostNow is a composting service based in Raleigh, NC, with services extending to Asheville, Charleston, Atlanta, and Cincinnati. Biobag Associate spoke to Olivia, Marketing Manager, with CompostNow about the organization. Their interview is transcribed below.
What led you to start your composting operation?
CompostNow was founded in 2011, in Raleigh, North Carolina. As part of a growing grassroots movement to rebuild soil health, our team saw an opportunity to create a more circular system by diverting food waste from landfills and using that to create nutrient-rich compost for our community.
When we started, our team collected food waste from homes in personal vehicles and washed buckets outdoors. These early years helped our team form a strong connection with our community, and laid a foundation for local garden and community partnerships that allowed us to turn food scraps into compost, and cycle nutrients back into the soil.
Purpose: We exist to rebuild the health of our soil by diverting waste from landfills and using it to create compost for our communities.
Who do you serve and how can people get in touch with you if they want to start composting?
Service Summary
- Currently servicing four metro areas (Asheville, NC; Atlanta, GA; Cincinnati, OH; Raleigh-Durham (Triangle), NC)
- We provide Commercial, Industrial, Municipal, and Residential organics recycling services
- You can find information about all of our services and capabilities at compostnow.org
How much organic material do you typically take in on a weekly basis?
We currently collect 1.5 million pounds of pre-consumer and post consumer food and organic waste on a monthly basis (375,000 lbs/week).
We recently began offering Hard-to-Recycle Add-on Services for residential households for items that are not typically accepted in curbside recycling programs. We collect items like batteries, styrofoam, and textiles right from your door-step!
Feel free to add any additional information about your operation as you see fit.
For over a decade, we have been committed to cycling nutrients back into our soil, and have stayed grounded in our principles to take care of people and planet. Today, we are thrilled to offer elevated pay for all employees; expanded time-off programs that include paid holiday, vacation days, and sick leave; 401k programs; and health benefits for full-time team members. We envision a circular system that takes care of our community in a holistic way, including the wellbeing and health of our team.
As a testament to our belief in a closed-loop system that nurtures the planet, we have prioritized returning compost to local gardens and farms through our Compost Give Back and Garden Partner Program. Our members have the option to receive or share their earned compost with local farms and gardens. We currently have 110 community gardens receiving compost at no cost through this program.
We’ve built our own in-house software to track and share the personal diversion data of our members, manage our hauling and logistics, and support the distribution of compost back into our community.
CompostNow is B Corp Certified.
If you would like to be featured in a future edition of Community Heroes, please email us at marketing@biobagusa.com.
