Education has always been a part of our business. This was surprising to us at first, but it became clear that if we were going to persuade anyone to use our service, we needed to educate them on why our planet needs us to compost. These days we do a lot of educating through our monthly blog on the topics of composting, zero waste and other areas of sustainability. After the George Floyd uprisings, many book groups popped up focused on reading and discussing books on racism/anti-racism and reading books by authors of color, but we were not aware […]
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April has become Earth Month and the week that includes Earth Day, April 22nd, has become Earth Week. We are heading into this week as I sit down to write. Very soon thereafter, May 2nd–8th, 2021, is a week that does not get quite as much attention around the world: International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW). This year, an organization in which Collective Resource Compost is deeply involved, Illinois Food Scrap Coalition (IFSC), is creating an online Lunch & Learn Series to celebrate it.
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Every spring, Collective Resource offers free finished compost to the customers who helped make it! We’re able to do this with the help of Healthy Soil Compost transporting the finished compost to The Talking Farm, who graciously hosts our gift-back event at their Howard Street Farm. The finished compost has been processed by Organix Recycling, a state-certified, US Composting Council-certified processor, located on the far south side of Chicago. This compost, packed with microorganisms and fungi, is ready for any type of crop, your victory garden or soil rehabilitation project! Mix it with 30–50% of another soil blend or […]
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I’m reading a midlife memoir written by musician Ben Folds called A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons. I love his explanation of the title that is about an actual dream he had when he was little, wherein he was catching lightning bugs in a jar and showing them to others. In the dream, he was the only one who could see them to catch them. He felt that the dream was a pretty accurate depiction of his life as an artist. Showing others what he finds luminous. That’s how I feel about this […]
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I thought I was going to write about the circular economy but it’s going to have to wait until next month. There is one particular part of a circular economy that I do want to write about: extended producer responsibility. It’s when the producer is responsible for disposing of the waste created by their product instead of the end-user being responsible. Our composting customer Village Farmstand has begun taking back their packaging, reusing what can be reused, composting what is compostable, and recycling. Do you know of any other businesses that do this? You might also recognize their name […]
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I’m so jazzed about all of the things we have going on and I don’t think it’s the coffee talking. Restaurant Raffle 2021 Inspired by the Village of Winnetka’s Take Out Challenge we created our own Restaurant Raffle to support the restaurants and other food-related businesses that have made sustainability a priority by continuing to use our composting service through the COVID crisis. We hope that you will peruse the list, give them your business and enter the raffle! Environmental Justice Discussion Group We’ve officially launched our Environmental Justice Discussion Group. We introduced the idea in our blogpost Addressing […]
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Education has always been a part of our business. This was surprising to us at first, but it became clear that if we were going to persuade anyone to use our service, we needed to educate them on why our planet needs us to compost. These days we do a lot of educating through our monthly blog on the topics of composting, zero waste and other areas of sustainability. After the George Floyd uprisings, many book groups popped up focused on reading and discussing books on racism/anti-racism and reading books by authors of color, but we were not aware […]
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Who’s ready for a post-holiday game that just happens to help our composting community? Winters are historically slower times for restaurants and cafes. This winter is likely to be even harder. Win a restaurant gift card We’re sponsoring a raffle for you to win a gift card from any of the food-related businesses listed below. You get to choose which one. First prize: $75 gift card, Second prize: $50 gift card, Third prize: $25 gift card. Raffle rules The raffle runs from January 13 through February 28, 2021. Show us receipts from any of the food-related businesses that are […]
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What do you hope for in 2021? I’m hoping that the COVID-19 vaccine works, that it is distributed quickly and equitably, and that any environmental gains that we’ve experienced because of the pandemic endure. I’m also encouraged that we can pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA) in Illinois and President-elect Biden’s version of the Green New Deal (The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice) in the United States. When I was thinking about the renewed hope for real climate and environmental justice progress that comes with the change in administration, I remembered this inspiring […]
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We’re happy to announce that we have reached another diversion milestone: 7000 tons! Can you believe it? Power of composting What’s amazing to us is that’s 7,000 tons lifted, shifted, and tipped by hand— no hydraulics. That’s a whole lot of muscle power from our crew. 14 million pounds of lifting and that doesn’t even include the weight of the containers, just the food scraps within1. Because tons are kind of hard to visualize, we used this nifty calculator2 to try to help you understand how very much that is. It’s about 1/4th as heavy as the Statue of […]
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