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Compost Queen is a Public Benefit Corporation in Fort Collins Colorado. We value the environment and our community over our bottom line in order to help our residents reduce their carbon footprint, lower the amount of organic materials going to the landfill, and increase soil biodiversity by offering finished compost back to the customer to use in their own space.
It all started in 2016 with our first serious gardening season in Northern Colorado. We wanted to close down our small plot at the end of the season and use the nutrients left in the plant to help build the soil, but we had no idea what we were doing.
After a deep dive online, we settled on a few books and a rotary tumbler. Two years later, we still didn’t have the results we wanted. We looked for a local solution and were surprised to find a lack of any food scrap composters in Larimer County.
So birthed an idea – we could compost for the people, and return it to them. Think Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) meets waste management – and so Compost Queen was born in September of 2018.
The short and sweet of it? We compost for you.
You fill our green bucket and we pick it up, replacing it with a clean bucket on each service visit.
Every month you’ll get a nice service report showing your impact.
We do all the hard and dirty work!
Your bucket travels along with others to our local farm partners. These partners help us reduce our carbon footprint by creating localized composting hubs.
Your bucket travels along with others to our local farm partners. These partners help us reduce our carbon footprint by creating localized composting hubs instead of distant mega-facilities. Farming partners get the benefit of managed material input and finished compost access.
One by one, we open each bucket and ensure no contamination goes into our waste stream. Scraps are chopped up and added to our active input piles and logged in our management system.
The secret sauce to good compost? Size and recipe. We build large scale piles, amend them with carbon inputs like leaves and landscaping browns, add water and turn accordingly.
Piles are managed through finishing and curing, and a sample is sent for finished testing.
Compost Queen PBC is helping the world stay a little greener by recycling food scraps from residential households and commercial businesses and turning it into nutrient rich compost. The finished compost is then returned to the customer to be used in their garden or landscaping, encouraging customers to put nutrients and biodiversity back into the soil and increase water retention rates to aid in decreasing overall water usage for local gardens and landscaping. Doing this also helps decrease the amount of organic material going into the local landfill decreasing greenhouse gases, which will be measured by pounds during service pickup and reported annually.
All curbside service includes limited free compost return, bagged leaf pickup and pumpkin harvesting.
Composting in Northern Colorado is underserved, and we’re here to help. We currently operate in Fort Collins, Timnath, Wellington and Laporte for most residences. To fully know if your house is serviceable for Compost Queen, check out the map below. You will need to be able to place your 4 gallon pickup bucket in a location accessible to our truck and small trailer.
We do not currently offer drop offs, but are actively working on providing this service. If you are interested in hosting a drop off location, please contact us at compostqueenfc@gmail.com.
Started in September of 2018, Compost Queen is the brain child of Jamie Blanchard-Poling, a long time environmental steward and nature lover. Inspired by her passion for renewable energy and zero waste, Jamie started Compost Queen to provide Northern Colorado with an achievable option to home composting.
