The Village of Riverside will be getting a new compost service provider to serve residences all year around.
Trustees approved an exclusive agreement with a Chicago based company WasteNot Inc. of Chicago to handle residents’ composting needs.
Riverside now has a contract with local disposal recycling service company Flood Brothers that was signed in 2015 for five years and renewed in 2020 for seven more years.
Flood Brothers provides composting services through their yard waste collection program, which operates from April through November with a five-month gap.
The village will keep the contract with Flood Brothers but residents now have an option to use WasteNot during these five months or year-round.
WasteNot, however, provides a year-round service.
The partnership would not cost the village money, and instead, WasteNot will provide a monthly discount to their services for the Riverside residents.
WasteNot works on a subscription basis; the monthly cost for weekly pick up will be $27 instead of $40. There will also be an option for bi-weekly service that will cost $18.
This agreement does not require a minimal number of subscribers from Riverside.
Residents can cancel or pause their subscription whenever they like.
The subscriber will receive a five-gallon, sealed container for their waste and during the pickup date, a WasteNot worker will collect the container on an electric car. The container should prevent bad smell, bugs and animals.
WasteNot also provides people with data on their impact and with the finished compost at the end.
Trustee Aberdeen Marsh-Ozga said she approved of the WasteNot company and first mentioned it in her Cross-Community Climate Collaborative C4 report.
“I am thrilled with [WasteNot] professionalism, their references, the level of data that they provide in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions,” Marsh-Ozga said.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food scraps and yard waste make up 20 to 30% of waste.
This contract is Riverside’s effort to create a more sustainable living environment.
Marsh-Ozga also added that the service could be useful even for people who do their own composting because it handles produce that residents can’t compost on their own like proteins.
The contract with WasteNot was also approved by village president Douglas Pollock.
“This is an example of a small good decision, you stack a bunch of small good decisions and you have success,” Pollock said.
