Composting business starts operating every two weeks in Durango – The Durango Herald
Additional subscription option reduces the cost and frequency of food waste collection
Chris Trullaz, operations manager for Table to Farm Compost, turns over a pile of compost on June 29, 2023, at the facility northeast of Durango. The composting company announced Tuesday that it is now offering biweekly services to current and potential subscribers who want to compost but don’t have enough materials to justify paying monthly for weekly compost pickup services. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald Archive)
Table to Farm Compost, a composting company in partnership with the city of Durango, has added compost pickups every two weeks to its services. Previously, it only offered weekly collections.
The additional subscription option was added to give customers more pricing flexibility, as well as to account for residents who simply don’t generate enough food scraps to warrant weekly service, said Monique DiGiorgio, co-owner and managing member of Table to Farm, On thursday.
Table to Farm charges $28 per month for weekly service. The new weekly service costs $18 per month.
“You asked and we listened,” she said in a press release.
She said The Herald of Durango many customers and prospects requested service every two weeks in a Table to Farm market study conducted last year.
The study offered subscribers three full months of free composting service in exchange for taking two surveys, one at the beginning of the free trial and one at the end of it. The surveys aimed to assess why residents were interested in composting and why they maintained their subscription or abandoned it after the free service ended.
“Cost is always a factor in a place with a high cost of living like the city,” she said. “A lot of people asked to reduce costs slightly.”
The market study was a boon for the composting business, increasing the number of subscribers by about 200 people, she said.
“The study just got people into the habit and behavior of composting,” she said. “Once you start doing that, it’s very difficult to throw leftover food in the trash.”
Since announcing the cheaper, less frequent subscription option earlier this week, Table to Farm has already added another 20 to 30 customers, she said.
Table to Farm Compost has significantly increased operations this year, with 2,000 to 3,000 cubic yards of in-process food waste being composted in several 200-foot-long windrows. (Courtesy of Table to Farm Compost)
DiGiorgio said the new automated pickup routing software, called StopSuite, is in part a thanks for the expanded subscription options. The system serves two purposes: it sends automatic reminders to customers about when compost collection is scheduled for them, and it automatically creates collection routes for Table to Farm drivers to follow to collect compost in the most efficient way possible.
“It would have been a big puzzle for us to solve,” she said of planning routes every two weeks.
The software also features an online portal where customers can rate the environmental impact of composting, the release says.
“We hope this investment in our business model brings us one step closer to citywide composting,” said Taylor Hanson, co-owner and managing member.
Durango has about 5,600 households within city limits and currently about 800 households subscribe to Table to Farm’s composting service.
DiGiorgio, like Hanson, said the goal is to get every family composting and then expand into La Plata County.
In 2021, Table to Farm entered into a five-year partnership with the city of Durango to promote composting and educate people about its benefits. The partnership was made with the lofty goal of achieving community-wide composting by 2025 or 2026.
Table to Farm is one of 16 such facilities in the state. It’s a 4½-acre lot on County Road 236, east of Durango, and has room to process up to 18,000 cubic yards of compost at any given time.
Table To Farm purchased a brand-new windrow turner this year, purchased with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Fertilizer Production Expansion Grant. The composting company has a public-private partnership with the City of Durango to provide composting services to interested residents, with the goal of getting residents to recycle organic food waste. (Courtesy of Table to Farm Compost)
The amount of compost it is processing has expanded significantly from a few hundred cubic yard piles in 2017, Table to Farm’s first full year of activity, to between 2,000 and 3,000 cubic yards of in-process material spread across numerous 200-foot blocks. length. windrows today.
“This is due to a lot of leftover food from customers (and donations) from the Ska Brewing beer chain,” she said.
The environmentally conscious business owners said they now have enough material processing to sell compost to farmers, the Colorado Department of Transportation for highway projects and local businesses like Durango Nursery, Botanical Concepts and Bayfield Gardens.
The compost can be bagged and sold to individual customers as well as backyard gardeners, DiGiorgio said.
She said Table to Farm has also received financial assistance from several federal sources. For example, it was one of eight companies in the United States to receive the first round of the Biden-Harris administration’s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program.
The program “financially supports independent, made-in-America, innovative, sustainable, and farmer-focused fertilizer production,” according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
She said the Biden-Harris administration supports circular economies and is implementing a national strategy to reduce food loss and waste by increasing the recycling of organic products, which can contribute to solutions to climate change.
Table to Farm Compost formed a public-private partnership with the city of Durango in 2021 to promote composting with the goal of citywide composting by 2025 or 2026. (Courtesy of Table to Farm Compost)
“Table to Farm is a circular business (that) brings food scraps from the county, makes compost and distributes it within a 50-mile radius to farmers and nurseries,” she said.
She said the composting business also recirculates resources and creates jobs in La Plata County. State organizations such as the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Department of Agriculture, the State Forest Service, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, as well as the USDA, have supported all composting efforts.
cburney@durangoherald.com
