Happy New Year from Collective Resource Compost Cooperative!

Written By Mary Beth Schaye

Image by susan-lu4esm via Pixabay

As the sun sets on 2023, we’re pausing to reflect on a few causes for celebration from this past year:

We became an employee- and community-owned cooperative! 80 members and growing.

 We reached our 13th birthday and our 12,000-tons-diverted-from-the-landfill-since-we-started milestone. We are routinely diverting 44 tons every week and have diverted 2000+ tons in this year alone.

We are now partnering with 3200+ customers throughout Chicagoland.  We continue to have impactful collaborations through franchise agreements with Evanston, Park Ridge and Skokie.

We were happy to help many events get closer to zero waste this year: from weddings to fundraisers to large music festivals like Winnetka Music Festival, Out of Space’s concerts at Canal Shores in Evanston and Northwestern University’s Dillo Day.

We’re encouraged by the growing number of community drop-off sites that created greater access to food scrap diversion, including our 9 village-sponsored sites added this year in Skokie.

We received a Sustain Evanston grant that allowed us to purchase our first two electric cargo vans.

We purchased a building with a garage space in Skokie that has allowed us to double our garage capacity.

Thank you for being part of our composting community, for choosing us to help you mitigate climate change. Together, we’ve diverted over 2,000 tons of food scraps in 2023. This has reduced greenhouse gases, reduced landfill use and nourished the soil.

Happy New Year from all of us at CRCC!

Compost Education, Zero Waste Events  & Customer Service—Erlene*, Mary Beth*, Beth*, Kevin, Grace, Chris, Laura, Ashley, Becky, Don, Igna

Operations—Jeremy, Ronnie*, Terrance

Compost Collection—Justin, Chris*, Jesus*, Joshua, Brian, Craig, Lora, Mike, Lester, Keith, Denzell

Container Maintenance—Nigel, Jose, Dev, Michael, Shaquille, Miles, Jaren

Consumer Co-op Board Members—Dana, Kitty, Joe

*Employee Co-op Board Members

Mary Beth Schaye

Mary Beth strongly believes that “It’s always better to be doing something rather than nothing.” If you’re thinking of composting at home, she can help you work out what your particular “something” can be. She’s confident a solution can be tailored to fit anyone’s needs and ambitions. “Anyone who eats can be a CRI customer, whether you are an individual or a large organization. I want you to understand the advantages of composting, and I can show you how CRI can make it easy.” Mary Beth has successfully designed waste diversion strategies for individuals, schools, houses of worship, and other communities. She’s received the governor’s Environmental Hero award for her work at her daughter’s school. Whether you’re starting with a backyard bin, a kitchen bucket, a worm farm, or a large-scale commercial collection, Mary Beth can be your good-natured guide.

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