12/19/2018
After seven years of service, it is with a heavy heart I announce that the Compost Pedallers are hanging up our helmets for good. We will be providing our bike-powered compost service through the end of the year, and January 5th will be our very last day of collections.
In 2012, Eric and I started this company to increase access to composting in Austin and to challenge the status quo. Since then we have worked with hundreds of Austinites to divert 1.2 million pounds of organics away from the landfill and into our local food system. We built a distributed network of community composting sites and powered the whole thing with a fleet of cargo bikes and about six and a half million burnt calories. All in all, we created about 300,000 pounds of fresh compost and saved over $30,000 in fertilizer costs for local farms & gardens.
As hard as we worked on the business, we always took our role as activists just as seriously. We knocked on doors, attended countless community gatherings, and engaged with city council to advocate for a greener future.
We fought hard for composting. And we won.
Austin Resource Recovery now provides curbside collection to about 90,000 homes, and is on track to expand service to all Austin houses by 2020. The Compost Pedallers community has played an important role in changing the conversation and the culture around organic waste in this city, and it’s in large part thanks to your commitment and collective effort that every home in Austin is now on track to get access to composting in the next couple years.
We’re also excited to announce the sale of our commercial business to our friends at Joe's Organics. Joe and his team are doing great work to close the loop with organics recycling and urban farming, and we are honored to support their growth.
If your business is looking for great composting services in Central Texas, you should also check out Break it Down, Organics By Gosh, and Texas Disposal Systems.
So we ride off into the sunset with our heads held high, grateful for the role we got to play in the evolution of recycling in our city and for all of you who made it possible. We set out to provide a humble service, and ended up building an amazing community full of some of the most caring and passionate people I’ve ever known.
To all of our amazing members. To our farm & garden partners, and the many community organizations that lifted us up. To our unbelievable staff, interns, and volunteers who gave so much of themselves to the mission over the years. To all of you who pitched a yard sign, sported a t-shirt, attended an event, or simply offered some encouragement out your car window as one of our cyclists was huffing it up a particularly gnarly hill.
Thank you.
None of this would have been possible without you. Let’s face it, the idea behind the Compost Pedallers was a little crazy from the start. But you embraced it, you nurtured it, and you made us what we are today. Together we did what many said we couldn’t. And by rolling up our sleeves to take action, our work has inspired others around the world to do the same. Hundreds of people across dozens of countries have reached out to let us know how our efforts have motivated them to start or stick with a project in their own community.
If we have learned anything from our work in composting, it’s that nothing ever really dies. It just breaks down to fertilize what’s next, what’s new, what’s yet to come. This has been an amazing journey. Thank you all for riding along with us.
To the germinating seeds of change,
Dustin Fedako, Eric Goff, & the Compost Pedallers
