EcoMovement’s Home Compost Pickup Changes the Game

Taking out the trash has long been a weekly American ritual. Albeit not a particularly enjoyable one.

Never a favorite chore – particularly for teenagers – efforts by certain cities in recent years to begin charging residents for trash bags have made gathering household refuse even less enjoyable.

Here on the Seacoast, one grassroots company is taking a stab at transforming a traditionally maligned task into one about which residents can feel good – and green.

Starting this past spring, EcoMovement Consulting &Hauling launched an innovative new residential compost hauling program. For just over five dollars a week, owners and renters alike can have their food waste – as well as items incapable of effectively breaking down in backyard garden piles, like compostable plates, cutlery, napkins, and to-go containers – picked up from their front curb weekly.

While EcoMovement currently only provides curbside service to Portsmouth, Kittery, Eliot, and New Castle, owner Rian Bedard hopes to soon expand further into the Seacoast region.

“Right now we’re looking for a critical mass in different areas before we commit to driving around,” explains Bedard, who has even taken to offsetting his truck’s emissions with carbon credits. “But the idea is to go wherever there’s demand for what we’re providing.”

Included in the $24 a month fee, customers receive a five-gallon bucket with an easy-to-use twist top, as well as a new compostable liner bag every week.

What’s more, beginning next spring customers will have the option of receiving fresh soil from EcoMovement, giving residents with small garden plots or plants a chance to see their efforts come full circle.

Call it community supported composting.

“We want it to work like a CSA [community supported agriculture],” says Bedard. “Like you would in a CSA, our customers are investing in our growth, so we want to be able to give something back.”

Bedard knows a little something about the trade: Since its 2009 launch, EcoMovement has forged similar partnerships with over 50 area restaurants and other businesses, patching together a network of clients that includes the Portsmouth Brewery, Pocos Bow Street Cantina, Two Ceres Street, and many others.

Naturally, the business’ impressive growth and increased exposure eventually led to calls from individuals interested in participating – albeit on a much smaller scale.

“Some people just didn’t have the time – or the space – to do anything with their home compost, others had started their own pile but were getting complaints from neighbors about it,” Bedard recalls.

As with residential compost, EcoMovement works with small businesses towards what Bedard calls “zero waste” status, helping curb and consolidate everything from food waste to recyclables to other, non-recyclable refuse.

Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. The subjects of a forthcoming piece on WMUR’s New Hampshire Chronicle, Bedard and EcoMovement have been profiled in media outlets ranging from NPR’s Morning Edition to the Associated Press, the Portsmouth Herald, Foster’s Daily Democrat, Taste of the Seacoast, as well as myriad blogs from around the country.

After living for a year in San Francisco, where he was certified as a Permaculture Designer and Instructor, Bedard returned to his native Kittery in November of 2007 to put into practice – and teach – what he’d learned to preach. He took an assistant manager position at Me and Ollie’s in downtown Portsmouth, and was immediately struck by how much waste even the most outwardly progressive eateries managed to produce.

“After living in San Francisco and being friends out there with people and businesses that were composting almost as second nature, I was sort of shocked to come back here and see how behind we really were,” recalls Bedard.

Inspired in part by a similar system pioneered by Whole Foods, Bedard set up glass boxes above each bin with examples of what should go where; things like napkins, cups, and any food scraps (including meats and cheeses), are, contrary to popular belief, compostable.

Bedard’s efforts at Me and Ollie’s eventually caught the attention of Sarah Brown, a local activist and founder of the Green Alliance (GA), which had just been launched the year before. Brown, whose organization already included a who’s who of local restaurants, felt that Bedard was the perfect fit for helping small companies -- and eateries especially -- reduce their waste.

Bedard would go on to serve as the assistant Director of the GA, all the while moonlighting on behalf of the infant EcoMovement. Since moving full time to EcoMovement’s helm – all the while keeping his business on as one of the GA’s 95 Business Partners – Bedard has nearly quadrupled the number of business clients, in the meantime planning ahead for the now up-and-running residential program.

While the new initiative has a ways to go before it rivals the size and scope of EcoMovement’s commercial composting program, Bedard – like the customers who will soon enjoy their former trash’s – only sees growth ahead.

“The great thing about the whole program is that it’s truly a grass roots thing,” exclaims Bedard. “It gets people to engage with their neighbors, in a way that hopefully opens up conversations about consumption – where we buy our food, what those bins on the curb are for.”

“The whole goal behind the program and the company is to get people to open up and start conversations.”

For more information on EcoMovement, go to www.zerowastenow.com

To learn more about Green Alliance, visit www.greenalliance.biz