Sponsored Post – from the Compost Pedallers
Food waste in the US is a 133 billion pound problem. Americans throw away enough food every year to fill the Sears tower 44 times. Most of this organic waste gets trucked to landfills and buried, where it rots and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 22 times more toxic than carbon dioxide. A recent study by the City of Austin Department of Resource Recovery found that 46 percent of residential trash going to landfills could actually be composted. While the majority of what is thrown away is compostable, the fact that only 3 percent of the US population has access to composting services presents a major roadblock for any city with goals to reduce its waste and emissions.
The Compost Pedallers offer an accessible business solution for organic resource recovery that is catching on in Austin as a sustainable alternative to “waste as usual.” Led by 27-year-old CEO Dustin Fedako, this social enterprise is on a mission to turn an out-dated waste industry on it’s head. Over the last three years, these young entrepreneurs have been hard at work building a disruptive new business model that transforms previously wasted resources into community assets, growing greener cities with what was once trash. Members pay a $16 monthly subscription fee in exchange for weekly organics collections, bin cleaning service, and access to rewards from Compost Pedallers’ business partners. Once collected and logged, materials are transported via cargo bike to be composted at a distributed network of over 20 urban farms and gardens.
Since their first collection on December 5th, 2012, the Pedallers have diverted 500,000 pounds of organics from landfills, kept 70 tons of methane out of earth’s atmosphere, and donated $13,000 worth of compost to local gardening efforts, all without burning a single drop of fossil fuel. A product of the Unltd USA Social Impact business accelerator, The Compost Pedallers’ mix of human-powered systems with cutting edge technology is quickly becoming a model for entrepreneurs attempting to address the environmental problems they face in their cities. Fedako’s team has been contacted by organizations in over 120 cities spanning 7 countries, including five new inquiries in just the last 10 days, all interested in replicating the Austin model back in their community.
Through a recent partnership with Trek Bicycles and other bike manufacturers, the Pedallers have developed the first cargo bike model designed specifically for urban waste collection. With preliminary tests indicating that this new technology can increase route efficiency by over 30 percent, the company is taking to Indiegogo (starting Nov. 10th) to crowdfund what they consider to be the missing ingredient required to scale rapidly and meet a growing demand. Every $10,000 raised through the Indiegogo campaign will pay for a complete operational unit, which includes a state-of-the-art electric-assist bicycle with a customized cargo trailer, and an operational station (called “pods”) to house it all. The Pedallers estimate that each of these new operational units will divert 200,000 pounds of organics away from the landfill and into local soils each year, supporting urban agriculture, diminishing emissions, and creating green jobs.The Compost Pedallers already serve much of Central Austin, but anticipate that an electrified bike fleet will allow them to enter previously inaccessible hilly and remote neighborhoods, and bring their service to the 1,400+ Austin residents on their waiting list.
The United Nations estimates that we will add 2.5 billion people to urban population by 2050. With this rapid trend towards urbanization, it is clear that cities have become the new centers of global environmental change. We must explore and support paradigm-shifting solutions to the problems posed by our archaic unsustainable systems of the past. As Ahmed Djoghlaf of the Convention of Biological Diversity puts it, “The battle for life on Earth will be won or lost in cities.”
The Compost Pedallers is a for-profit enterprise founded in 2012 by Dustin Fedako and Eric Goff. Serving nearly 600 weekly subscribers and supporting 7 full time equivalent employees, The Compost Pedallers is largest bike-powered company in the world.
