Welcome to BioBag’s Community Heroes series! Each month, we will highlight community heroes that are making a difference in their communities and working to make their local environments cleaner and healthier.
This month, we are taking a look at Blue Earth Compost!
Founded in 2013, Blue Earth Compost serves homeowners and businesses in the Greater Hartford region and throughout most of Connecticut, as well as parts of southern Massachusetts. Blue Earth is inspired by the idea that people want to do the right thing by the planet and divert food scraps from landfills and incinerators, but they need better systems and processes in place to accomplish this goal. As such, Blue Earth provides both residential and commercial services, working with households and businesses that lack the space, resources, or infrastructure to compost themselves.
We spoke to Blue Earth Compost’s Owner & Director of Operations Alex Williams, as well as Sam from Blue Earth’s Daily Operations team, to learn a little more about their organization.
What led you to start your composting operation?
Alex Williams: Blue Earth was started in the fall of 2013 by a woman named Susannah Castle. I returned from college around that time and began interning with her. About six months after she started the business, in the spring of 2014, she had to relocate, and it sort of fell into my lap. My parents and I bought the business that April, and the rest is history. I originally became associated with composting through some internships in college. I caught the composting bug doing some nonprofit work down in Queens and just kind of never looked back.
Who do you serve, and how can people get in touch with you if they want to start composting?
Alex: Blue Earth is a residential, commercial, and event food scrap collection service. Our service really runs the gamut. We can collect commercially from anyone from a small corner cafe, all the way up to a grocery store or a multi-national corporate headquarters. We’re able to service the smallest to the biggest customers, commercially.
Residentially, we service households and apartment buildings. Again, we really cover the whole spectrum. The best way to get in touch with us, for sure, residentially, is through out website, blueearthcompost.com. We have a convenient sign-up form right there that you can input all of your information, and we’ll get you going. Commercially, give us a call at (860) 266-7346 or shoot us an email at info@blueearthcompost.com. We’re always available to set up a meeting and get you going.
How much organic material do you typically take in on a weekly basis?
Alex: Sam probably knows this better than me. Covid definitely lowered our volumes, especially commercially.
Sam: We compost anywhere between 25 and about 50 tons per week, currently, and we look to expand that.
Please give us one fun fact about you or your business.
Alex: We know the Governor of Connecticut quite well. Ned Lamont has been to our space a couple times. We unveiled our food scrap collection dump truck, the first of its kind in the state, right outside the state capitol in Hartford. We’ve got a good relationship with the elected officials here in the state.
Is there any additional information about your operation that you’d like to share?
Sam: We’re always so excited to work with other organizations and manufacturers of compost-related products to help us advance our mission and help expand composting. BioBag has been such a big player in our business ever since the beginning. The compostable bags help make our service for residential customers nice and easy and clean, and without those products, it would be very difficult to make more people able to do this.
If you would like to be featured in a future edition of Community Heroes, please email us at marketing@biobagusa.com.
