Why Compost?

Home composting is the highest-impact action any household can do to cut its greenhouse emissions and move closer to Net Zero. Methane is 25x more potent than CO2, and food hauled away by waste management services (i.e., your weekly trash pickup) just rots in landfills, creating a massive source of methane release.

Most people can easily grasp the massive environmental win that could be achieved if everyone composted, but most of us don’t have the space, time, knowledge, or frankly the need for home composting. (We get it: gardening in Colorado is hard.)

As local Wheat Ridge-ians, our mission is to make composting accessible to anyone in our community who wants to reduce their food waste, footprint, and emissions.

We looked around and realized that most existing local compost pickup services now cost upwards of $40 per month – or nearly $500 a year!

That’s where we come in, at just $29/month for a 5-gallon weekly pickup. That's 28% savings for you vs other services!

How do we do it? This is a passion side project, so we're operating on breakeven margins just to expand composting in our community. Plus, we don't waste money on frivolous things (like professional logo design, clearly), so we can pass those savings on to you!

If you by chance find a lower-priced pickup service, please email a screenshot to hi@dirtcheapcompost.com – we'll beat it!

  • 67% of People Think They Waste Less Food Than Others

    ...But do you?

    Think of your avocado rinds, banana peels, broccoli stems, chicken skins...

  • Each Person Wastes an Average of 3.5 Pounds of Food a Week

    Smaller households waste more food than larger households. If you live alone, or with one other person, you're likely wasting more food than this.

  • Feel Better About the Food You Don't Eat

    Send it to Dirt Cheap Compost to complete the natural lifecylce of your food!

How It Works

Step 1: Your service starts the week following your sign up. Included in every membership is a 5-gallon sealable odor-locking bin, and one month's worth of our approved plant-based compostable bags.

Step 2: Fill up your little bags with your meal waste, uneaten prepared food, and kitchen trimmings.

Step 3: We come to collect, each and every week. Place your sealable bin outside your front door (if you don't already keep it there) and we will take your bags from within your sealable bin, the exact same as your trash or recycling service.

Step 4: Rinse and repeat! (Seriously please rinse your bin occasionally.)

Our Mission

To make composting easy and accessible to anyone in Arvada, Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Golden, and the surrounding areas. If you want to turn your food scraps and leftovers into nutrient rich compost, instead of methane-releasing trash, you're our kind of people!

Composting your food waste instead of throwing it in a landfill can decrease greenhouse gas emissions by over 50%, helping to ensure a livable planet for our future local, national, and global communities.