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 Northfield Curbside Compost!

Northfield Curbside Compost was founded in 2017 with a mission to reduce waste filling up the Rice County, Minnesota landfills, lower local greenhouse gas emissions, create quality local jobs, and provide excellent service to their composting customers. We spoke to Worker-Owner Bec Ersek to learn a little more about their worker co-op.

What led you to start your composting operation?

Ersek: As a group of young people we wanted to divert waste from the landfill to limit the growth of our local landfill and subsequent methane emissions of our town. We saw the opportunity to fill a community need that had the local energy and interest around while being able to create democratic jobs for ourselves and others!

Who do you serve, and how can people get in touch with you if they want to start composting?

Ersek: We serve all of Northfield and Dundas, Minnesota. Interested folks can go to our website, www.northfieldcompost.com where our email northfieldcomposting@gmail.com and phone number is available for connecting with us.

How much organic material do you typically take in on a weekly basis?

Ersek: 9,000 pounds, right now.

Please give us one fun fact about you or your business.

Ersek: We are a successful worker cooperative! This means we are a business owned, managed and run by the workers, which gives each of us an equal say in the day-to-day operations and the long-term goals/directions of the co-op.

Feel free to add any additional information about your operation as you see fit.

Ersek: We are in the works of opening our own processing facility that will expand our ability to collect, remove the need for dumpsters, and create compost products back to our subscribers and community. We do a lot of community education on our own and along with the city of Northfield including schools, condo communities, senior centers and many other organizations.

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If you would like to be featured in a future edition of Community Heroes, please email us at marketing@biobagusa.com.