How it works

It is a bucket swap on a fixed route. Six steps, and the only one that takes any of your time is staging the buckets.

Step 01
Check your address

Pick your neighborhood and see whether it is on route, still forming, or not covered yet. Covered neighborhoods get a route day and a real start date on the spot.

Step 02
Tell us your volume

A bucket holds about 20 lbs of food scraps. Most cafés run 4 to 6 a week, restaurants 8 to 16, grocery 15 and up. You can change the count any time before 5pm the day before a pickup.

Step 03
Buckets arrive on your first service day

That first visit is a delivery, not a pickup, and nothing is charged for it. Your first real pickup is the following service day.

Step 04
Stage your buckets, lidded

Put them where you told us on your service day. That one line in your file is what keeps readiness surcharges off your account.

Step 05
The earth steward swaps them

Each full bucket goes on a hanging scale, the weight lands on your account, and the same number of clean buckets with fresh liners comes back.

Step 06
You get the paper trail

Pounds diverted, where the finished compost went, and a report you can forward to a landlord, a franchisor, or an auditor.

Changing a pickup

Two controls live in your account and neither needs a phone call.

Self-serviceUntil 5pm the day before
Skip a pickupFree until 5pm the day before. Because your card usually ran two business days out, a late skip is credited to your next pickup rather than refunded. Skip before the charge runs and nothing is taken at all.
Add a bucketSame deadline. If the card already ran, the extra bucket rides on your next charge at the marginal rate.

If your block is not on route yet

Route density is what keeps the price where it is.

Route forming

Sign up with no card and nothing charged. When four businesses near you have signed up, the route opens and we book your start date.

You get a referral link at signup. Anyone who joins through it gets a credit, and so do you.

If we are not in your neighborhood at all, we take your address for the waitlist so the demand shows up on the operations board.

Why monthly collection is capped
Monthly is only offered at 4 buckets or fewer. Four weeks of food scraps sitting in a bucket is a pest and odor problem, and it is not something we will sell you.