Sustainability Snapshot | Winter Quarterly 2021
Commercial Composter Coming Soon to Arcata Co-op
The Co-op has been on the road to steadily increasing landfill diversion in many ways and we have been proponents for a solution via composting on the municipal and county level for years. Up until now, we have diverted our own (inedible) compostable materials through our contracts with the wonderful locally owned business the Local Worm Guy. LWG has provided us with an invaluable resource for many years and is an amazing asset to our community; we are grateful to have been partnered with them for so long!
The next logical step for us in fulfilling our Strategic Plan’s commitment to Environmental Responsibility was taking a more active and direct role in reducing our waste. We are incredibly excited to announce we will soon begin processing our own compost on-site at our Arcata store! Our new commercial composter is “designed for all food waste producers to repurpose unconsumed food into a nutrient-rich soil amendment without interrupting daily operations.” Self-contained industrial composters are the practical solution to managing our unconsumable but compostable waste right on site where we can take full responsibility and practice a more circular waste process. This can be the future for small producers to take real action on landfill diversion. It works with a combination of heat and microorganisms to break down food waste and compostable single-use items into real usable soil-amendment in a 24-hour cycle!
What’s more exciting is that in addition to handling our own compost, we will be opening up compost drop-off services to the public once our new equipment is up and running. More details on pricing and how you can drop off your compost coming soon —we are excited to tell you all more about this venture.
