Hi composters! I'm Sam from Circle Compost in Philadelphia. We started picking up food scraps in summer 2016 (I came aboard in Fall '16) and have grown to almost 300 customers (residential and commercial). We do the majority of our residential pick ups (with some commerical mixed in) via bicycle and take the organics from these routes to urban farms and gardens throughout the city. We maintain organics piles in bins at these locations and the farmers/gardeners may use as much of the finished compost as they'd like. For the primarily commercial account routes, we use an F150 truck and take everything to an agricultural high school just outside the city, which will do all of the composting.
I hope to learn and share best practices with the community and an interesting fact about me is I was an extra in both Creed movies to date (love the Rocky movies, obviously).
Check out what we accomplished in 2017 here:https://www.circlecompost.com/2018/03/02/impact-report-2017/
Thanks, Andrew. So, you are putting the compostable bags full of food waste in the truck bed? What compostable liners are you using?
We just recently started commercial pickups and use 35 gallon roll carts. Uline has some good ones: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4202BLU/Trash-Cans/Uline-Trash-Can-with-Wheels-35-Gallon-Blue?pricode=WA9685&gadtype=pla&id=H-4202BLU&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg7mIipPO2wIVVjyBCh0ZFAMYEAQYASABEgJisfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
We are lining them with 55 Gallon Compostable bags, then dumping the bins in the back of a pickup, and replacing the bags each pickup.
I have seen some really cool satellite rigs and trailers. I just stumbled on this trailer that look awesome:
http://protainer.com/index.php/compactor-trailer/
We are looking at vehicles so that we can service restaurants. What do you collect large volumes of food in? We are considering 33 gal. plastic drums. We have been told we need a 3/4 ton truck to carry the weight of 4-6 of these? I would love to get your input. Thanks
Hey Sam. Thanks for joining. The 2017 impact report is awesome. Thanks for sharing! Congrats on 300 customers, that is outstanding. Exited to hear more from you in the near future.