Top: Compost Crew team member collecting food scraps in Alexandria, Virginia. Photo courtesy of Compost Crew

BioCycle has been tracking Compost Crew in Rockville, Maryland since it began operations in 2011. It was among the first smaller scale food waste haulers to service municipal collection programs. Compost Crew now provides residential and commercial food waste collection throughout the greater Washington, D.C. region that includes northern Virginia, the District of Columbia and nearby Maryland. The company reports that it recycled over 10,000 tons of food waste in 2023 from about 20,000 customers. Central to the increase in customers was Compost Crew’s selection via competitive bidding processes as the contractor for two separate municipal curbside composting programs launched in 2023. In the District of Columbia, Compost Crew was chosen to collect food scraps from approximately 9,000 participating homes across all eight Wards that registered for the District’s curbside composting pilot. The pilot program has diverted nearly 300 tons of food waste since collection began in September 2023. In March 2023, the City of Alexandria began its own curbside composting program with financial support from a Composting and Food Waste Reduction (CFWR) USDA grant, and also chose Compost Crew to provide the collection service. Over 1,100 Alexandria residents signed up, resulting in more than 115 tons of organic material diverted from area landfills.

The company has also been expanding installations of its modular composting system, branded Compost Outpost™, that uses repurposed shipping containers to build solar-powered aerated static pile composting sites. The first Compost Outpost was installed at One Acre Farm in Dickerson, Maryland using two containers with a total of four aerated bays. Compost Crew opened a site (its fourth) in partnership with Fairfax County’s Solid Waste Management Program in 2023 that is located at the county’s transfer station. In addition, the company partnered with the City of Greenbelt and the Town of Edmonston, Maryland in 2023 to construct two Outposts using USDA CFWR grant funds. The facilities will be operational in Spring 2024. With the growth in production, Compost Crew launched its own brand of finished compost, called Farm Feast, which is available to purchase bagged or in bulk.