Compost At Scale Shows Success In Cutting Carbon, Building Soils and Growing Business

King County, WA –Cedar Grove Composting, a local and family-owned business, has rescued recoverable and reusable organics from the garbage pile and changed the face of the solid waste industry in the Northwest. With an innovative life-cycle management process, they collect lawn clippings, leaves, and food waste to process into high quality compost. Through collaboration with local governments and businesses, Cedar Grove has grown from 12 employees to 104, and become the largest, single dedicated yard waste composting facility in the United States.

"Our program has really significantly impacted this community in developing a great carbon reduction story,” said Steve Banchero, President, Cedar Grove Composting. 

Food waste is estimated to account for 50% of the total waste stream. When food or organic scraps are thrown into the trash, they unnecessarily increase garbage quantities, landfill size, and methane gas releases.  The City of Seattle and Cedar Grove started collecting yard waste in 1988 and collecting food waste in 2004.  This collaboration of government encouragement, customer involvement and business investment has made composting in the Northwest a huge success. As a result, Cedar Grove has made its business by recycling over five million tons of organic waste, and turning it into a successful line of quality, earth-friendly compost and soil products.

“This is an incredible carbon cutting and capturing story,” said Rhys Roth, Director of Strategic Innovation for Climate Solutions.  “It’s an example of how taking a simple solution and growing it to scale can create significant steps in addressing global warming.”  

The carbon advantages of composting are not limited to the organic waste recycling process. For each US ton of organic material composted, 93% of a metric tonnes of carbon equivalent greenhouse gases are not released. Through the process, the carbon in the food and yard waste is maintained and incorporated into the compost soil providing a nutrient rich base for gardening or agriculture. By increasing carbon levels and building a healthy microbial community in soils, compost is helping to reduce erosion and flooding, regulate temperatures, feed existing organisms to make nutrients available to plants.

View the inspiring story of Garbage Gone Green here or use this embed code:

Climate Solutions, a Northwest-based clean-energy economy nonprofit, produced the video for the Solutions Stories project. The Solutions Stories project captures and communicates clean energy economy success stories happening now in the Northwest. Climate Solutions is also spearheading the Northwest BiocarbonInitiative which cultivates biocarbon leadership and innovation. There is a critical need to reduce fossil fuel use to stop global warming. Absorbing carbon through natural systems, also known as “biocarbon,” is now emerging as a critical second solution to the climate crisis. 

In addition to Cedar Grove, Climate Solutions highlighted the story of John Aeschliman, an extraordinary no-till farmer in Colfax, Washington who has broken new ground to address by not breaking ground, and realized a second benefit of absorbing carbon.

Additional information on Cedar Grove’s success and other solutions stories can be found at solutions-stories.org, as well as on the Northwest Biocarbon Initiative. 

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Climate Solutions is a Northwest-based cleanenergy economy nonprofit that works to accelerate practical and profitable solutions to global warming by galvanizing leadership, growing investment and bridging divides. Since 1998, Climate Solutions has pioneered the vision and cultivated political leadership in the Northwest for the proposition that clean energy and broadly-shared economic prosperity can go hand-in-hand. Through our Business Leaders, New Energy Cities and Harvesting Clean Energy programs, Climate Solutions builds a powerful constituency for local, regional and national action on climate and clean energy.