From Classroom to Community Compost! The Community Compost Company Acquires a New Office Space

From Classroom to Community Compost! The Community Compost Company Acquires a New Office Space

Eileen Banyra at the GCSEN 2016 Bootcamp

In August 2016, Eileen Banyra, founder/CEO of Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil wrote a declaration on the GCSEN Evergreen Incubator “2030 Verse Wall” She wrote, “By 2036 my 4P Social Entrepreneur Verse for People, Profit, Planet, and Place will be helping to restore the Earth’s soil from the ground up!” Waste to resource-making compost!

The Community Compost Company recently acquired an office building in Kerhonkson, NY to continue with its business operations. Eileen Banyra, Founder and CEO, established her business in 2013 and was certified as a 4p Social Entrepreneur in 2016. The Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil is a women-owned business located in the Hudson Valley. The team is composed of passionate environmentalists committed to educating the public on food waste reduction, composting, and soil health.

In 2018, the team moved their composting farm to Kerhonkson, NY. The Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil acquired its new office space after working at the GCSEN Evergreen Incubator for two years at headquarters. This past summer, GCSEN Foundation donated a Social Venture Impact Grant of $2,000 to help with their new office building construction to expand operations to its 500 clients. 

Office  - for year-round operations. Photo credits to Flor Najera

One of the main services they offer is the collection of residential and commercial organic waste across the NY and NJ regions. The team collects food waste and in 5 months produces certified organic use compost aiming to restore the soil and reduce food waste. The truck routes run through New Paltz, Kingston, Woodstock, Beacon, and other areas of the Hudson Valley as well as northern New Jersey, primarily in Hudson County. All the composting material that gets hauled from all these different places gets mixed and processed into finished compost through the aerated static pile method on their farm in Kerhonkson. The resulting compost is sold in bulk and bags through their brand Hudson Soil Company. 

Collection Truck - Photo credits to Flor Najera

“Compost is really great for improving soil quality. It’s a soil amendment that will help grow healthier plants and supply organic matter,” said Molly Lindsay, Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil Director of Operations. “...Composting, in general, is better, obviously than throwing away your food scraps, but having them collected in one place, like at our drop spot locations, rather than multiple door-to-door locations is also helpful.”

Since the Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil’s inception, the food waste collection grew to 3,748,793 pounds of certified organic compost! 

Soil health is suffering around the globe and in the U.S. alone, according to the Community Compost Company, soil on cropland is being destroyed 10x faster than it is being replenished. In the meantime, food scraps and other organic materials now make up 50% of the waste stream, and organics decomposing in landfills now contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions that are causing our climate to change. The Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil believes that composting is a solution to both of these issues and an easy action we all can take every day to make a positive impact on the planet. 

“[There are practical, cost-effective, efficient low-carbon] ideas of what compost is. For us, it's really about meeting certain thresholds of microbial health because that's what brings health to the land,” said Johanna Hoffman, Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil Soil Specialist.

The Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil has exciting plans for scaling up in the next couple of years. From developing more products on their composting site to improving the biology of their soil.

As far as Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil’s strategy and positioning for collection services, New York State is mandating recycling for large-scale generators. “We are definitely planning to continue growing our collection service and expanding to different areas. And then, with our New Jersey operation, we [will] keep growing this program with the municipalities in different towns where we're doing food scrap drop spots for residents. So people will bring their food waste to one location, like a community garden, or like a school and we [now] have our bins set up there. So everyone's material there, and then we're just collecting it from one location rather than going door to door collecting smaller amounts,” said Molly Lindsay. This process reduces fuel and C02 gas in the air. 

At GCSEN Foundation, one of our goals is to accelerate more GCSEN 4P Social Ventures in the market and begin the positive cycle of value creation, cash flow, and voluntary exchange in real-time while getting practical customer feedback just as the Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil is doing. Since 2015, GCSEN has certified over 630 Social Entrepreneurs via its college partners Wheaton College (MA), SUNY New Paltz School of Business, Vassar College (NY), and Saint Peter’s University Business School (NJ),  at LeMoyne College Madden School of Business, NY, and Lindenwood University. GCSEN has worked with Social Entrepreneurs of ages 18-68 years old and reached students and adult learners from 12 states and 12 countries. From Boston to Bangkok, New York City to New Delhi, from Brazil to Istanbul, GCSEN 4p Social Entrepreneurs are helping each other succeed through lifetime Club THEOS Alumni Services and are striving to make meaning, Make Money and Move the World to a Better Place! It’s exciting to see the Community Compost Company/Hudson Soil grow and GCSEN 4p Social Venture Impacts too!

For more information on GCSEN go to www.GCSEN.com. Press Contact- Mike Caslin, Founder/CEO, Mike@gcsen.com, cell- 001-212-444-2071 or GCSEN Media Relations Coordinator Junior Consultant Flor Najera, flor@gcsen.com.

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