How to Compost Kitchen Scraps and Food Waste at Home in Wheat Ridge, Colorado
Like most Coloradans, residents of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, have been on the lookout for effective eco-solutions that reduce their climate footprint as much as possible. Traditional home composting, while extremely valuable, isn't feasible for everyone due to space, time, and other constraints. Additionally, living in Jefferson County means that we don't yet benefit from city-provided home compost pickup services like our friends in Denver County.
This is where Dirt Cheap Compost™ comes in. We offer a seamless process to ensure your kitchen scraps don’t just end up in landfills, but rather are transformed into high-quality natural compost at local industrial facilities. Let's unearth how DCC is revolutionizing composting in Wheat Ridge.
The Benefits of Partnering with Dirt Cheap Compost
- Tackling Greenhouse Gases: Landfill-bound organic waste is a significant methane producer—a greenhouse gas with potency as much as 25x that of CO2. By collecting food scraps instead of throwing them away, each household in our community plays a crucial role in minimizing these emissions and the resulting severity of the climate crisis.
- Boosting Local Soil Health: Our customers don't receive any compost directly, but they can take solace in knowing their waste contributes to producing nutrient-rich compost, beneficial to Colorado's landscapes. If you'd like to receive a bag of compost as part of your service, there are other (somewhat more expensive) services in the area that offer this as part of their packages.
- Affordability: This is a passion project as much as it is a business, and we started DCC to amplify existing composting efforts in our local community. Why? After the cost of our own composting pickup service ballooned to nearly $40 per month in just our second year of service, we had a hard time imagining that home composting would catch on if it cost our neighbors nearly $500/year. By offering a simple weekly pickup service for just $19/month, we hope that more homes in our community will choose to isolate their food scraps from their trash. The more people who sign up for home compost pickup, the more who tell their friends... creating a local snowball effect!
- Supporting Community Initiatives: Choosing Dirt Cheap Compost means you’re investing in local eco-conscious endeavors and small businesses owned and operated by your neighbors.
Making Composting a Breeze: How It Works
- Collecting Scraps: During your normal daily cooking and eating, simply isolate kitchen waste like fruit remnants, vegetable peels, coffee grounds, and eggshells. We recommend simply having a little bin or bucket on your countertop lined with a kitchen-sized compost bag. FYI: items like dairy, liquids, and oils should be excluded.
- Your Sturdy Compost Bin: Every Dirt Cheap Compost member—whether on a monthly or annual plan—receives a 6-gallon metal bin with a secure lid. As you fill up bags in the kitchen during the week, just tie them, and drop them into your bin out front. Designed for safety against animals and to mitigate unpleasant odors, your bin can sit right at your front door, and we'll empty it each week on Sunday. To ensure its longevity and cleanliness, it's recommended to give the bin a wash occasionally.
- Reliable Weekly Pick-ups: Make sure you set your filled compost bags out every Sunday in your bin, mirroring your regular waste collection routine. If we have to reschedule due to inclement weather, we'll email you with your new pick-up date that week.
- Transformation Journey: Instead of being discarded, your kitchen waste is transported to a dedicated industrial composting facility about an hour north of Wheat Ridge. Here, it undergoes a metamorphosis into high-quality compost, playing a role in the broader ecological balance.
About Dirt Cheap Compost
- Pocket-Friendly Memberships: With just $19/month or a $199 annual fee, you become part of the Dirt Cheap Compost family. As a welcome gesture, along with your bin, your first month’s kitchen counter compost bags will be dropped off at your front door. We want getting started to be completely frictionless!
- Co-Founders: Steering Dirt Cheap Compost are two eco-enthusiasts from Wheat Ridge. Colin McIntosh is also the founder of Sheets & Giggles, a Colorado sleep brand renowned for its eco-friendly Eucalyptus Lyocell sheets and plant-based mattresses, which have been featured on Good Morning America multiple times – most recently on Earth Day 2023! His co-founder is Madison Hopkins, a former Green Realtor® in the area, and voice behind the Eco-Friendly Homes podcast. Their combined expertise and dedication fuel the ambitions of Dirt Cheap Compost!
