Golden Carrot Winner: Happy Trashcan Curbside Composting
As part of National Farm to School Month, we’re celebrating our community partners who help make our community an amazing place.
We’re incredibly honored and thrilled to award Happy Trash Can Curbside Compost with a Golden Carrot Award!
Photo by Kevin Tinell
Behind the operation of Happy Trash Can Curbside Compost are Ryan and Adrienne - a truly dynamic duo!
Ryan began his career by attending culinary school and working in the restaurant industry, where he first became interested in local agriculture and procurement. Going to the farmers market to purchase ingredients helped Ryan realize his interests in growing his own food. From there, he went to school for agroecology and began working on organic farms in Maine. While as a student in Maine, he worked to collect food scraps from the school cafeteria and assist with processing and composting the material. It was his first experience with large-scale commercial collection and composting, and it left an impact! It was here he first saw the impact a closed-loop system could bring.
After Maine, Ryan moved to NYC, where he worked for the NYC Compost Project. Ryan was hired to start community compost drop-off stations in Midtown Manhattan, where residents would bring frozen food scraps that he would collect and compost, distributing the finished compost to community parks and gardens. Ryan found this work inspiring, as it was a great example of grassroots community based outreach and education, with the backing of a city municipality for funding and support.
Also living in NYC at the time, Adrienne was inspired by Ryan’s work at the NYC Compost Project. She volunteered at their community garden and built a 3-tier compost bin there, spearheaded by the Compost Project, and applied for a micro grant to fund the project. Adrienne worked to expand composting systems to other community gardens in the area as well. Her work allowed the community gardens to accept food scraps from the entire block and surrounding neighborhood, having a lasting community impact.
Adrienne was always interested in recycling, and believes composting is the perfect form of recycling. It’s a win-win for her to take both the experience and passion of composting and bring it back to her hometown of Bozeman. When she moved away from Bozeman in 2006, there were no curbside composting services available. Her and Ryan worked together to change that.
Starting their business in 2016, both Ryan and Adrienne’s ethos is to create community by connecting people to their organic waste streams and local food systems. They believe creating a viable fertility source for our community helps empower our local growers and gardeners and makes a more resilient system. According to them, our waste is equal to more visible parts of the food system because no component is greater or smaller in an ecologically based system; every component has a part to drive the system forward, even (or especially) how we manage our food waste. Creating a closed-loop system is important for Ryan and Adrienne. They believe engaging with our waste stream, including how it’s produced, picked up, and processed, is similar to connecting to where our food comes from and how its grown.
Adrienne is proud to be working towards closing the loop. It’s gratifying for her to watch compost be used by local farms, eat the produce from those farms, and then have the scraps go back into the compost. It’s a system she hopes continues to grow. When asked what his happiest moment was, Ryan reflected on starting the business at Strike Farms, which is now operated by Chance Farms. Continuously bringing compost to that piece of land, to continue to work with a friend and local producer, and to support each other's businesses, is incredibly rewarding. It closes the loop in ways that are very personal.
Looking ahead, the team is focused on working with Bozeman Solid Waste and the city to help increase its composting program and accessibility. Currently, the city only accepts yard waste, but Ryan and Adrienne are working towards creating a year-round composting program with the city that includes food waste. They want to build a scalable system to reach the entire community and create real, systemic change, including for schools, apartment buildings, and for people who historically have not had access to composting.
They’ve seen a lot of growth in compost awareness in the last couple of years, and are hopeful it will continue to grow. It’s a tangible and positive way to address climate change and other food system issues. The positive aspect is what attracted Adrienne to compost work; it’s an easy action that’s low hanging fruit for both individuals, communities, and municipalities. Composting can be a grassroots movement, allowing individuals to take responsibility and drive the solution forward.
If you would like to learn more about Happy Trash Can Curbside Compost and the services they offer, visit their website at https://www.happytrashcan.net
We at Gallatin Valley Farm to School are grateful for the work you do in our community! Thank you for creating a more sustainable and resilient local food system for the Gallatin Valley.
