Insights, updates, and announcements
Greener Living Inspirations
Make this Halloween Less Scary: Recycle Wrappers and Smash Pumpkins
It’s that time of year, when our household waste production begins picking up speed. We can help recycle your leftover candy wrappers with Zero Waste Bags, and we can compost your pumpkins free-of-charge with your regular composting service. Check out a local pumpkin smash event near you!
It’s Electric!
We recently purchased two brand new electric vans for our compost pickups, and that prompted us to look at ways we could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas by exploring clean energy options in our everyday lives. Here are a few for you to consider.
How Is Your Garden Growing?
We love seeing so many of you at our Spring Finished Compost Giftback. We appreciate your enthusiasm for circularity, for using the compost you helped create in your own gardens. So, we’re curious to know how your garden is growing. Tell us about it!
Become a Founding Owner: Help Us Get to 200
On July 1st last year, we officially began operating as a co-op. We really appreciate all of the people who have stepped up and become owners since then. Now seems like a good time to list the owners who have joined us so far. But first, we want to, as succinctly as possible, explain how becoming an owner benefits the co-op, all of the employees, and all of the owners.
Our Birthday Gift to You
We’re celebrating our 14th birthday on June 16 and we have a gift for you! 10% off for new annual or quarterly subscriptions. $25 referral credit for current customers.* More people composting would make us happier than carrot cake and way happier than balloons. When describing how the company came to be, our founder Erlene Howard likes to say the lightbulb went off. The lightbulb, in this case, being the idea that if composting were easy, more people would do it.
Zero Waste Bags to the Rescue
You may have already seen our announcement on social media, but here’s a little more info on our new collaboration with TerraCycle: Zero Waste Bags. It’s a service to help you recycle hard-to-recycle items from your doorstep, on your time frame. We are adding this service onto our other offerings. Why are we doing this? We see such a need for this in our community.
2024 Spring Finished Compost Gift-Back
We’re offering free finished compost as a gift to our loyal customers and owners! Collective Resource Compost Cooperative customers can claim a gift of up to 10 gallons of finished compost. Collective Resource Compost Cooperative owners can claim a gift of up to 20 gallons.
Help us get to 100!
At 87 owners, we are so close. We just love the idea of having a nice, round 100 by our annual meeting. But, we’d be just as happy to exceed that goal. If you buy even a quarter-share now, you can join us to celebrate at Robert Crown Community Center on Wednesday, March 13th, 7:00-8:30 pm.
Restaurant Raffle 2024: Win While Helping Local Businesses
It’s our fourth year of holding a restaurant raffle to support our composting community. Winters are historically slower times for restaurants and cafés. We’re sponsoring a raffle where you can win a gift card from any of the food-related businesses listed below. The raffle begins now and runs through March 15th.
Park Ridge Update: Franchise Agreement Extended
Good news! The Village of Park Ridge has extended our franchise agreement for another two years—through April 2026. These franchise agreements really work. We know that composting, in general, is becoming more mainstream. But we also know that the communications that municipalities do on our behalf give you more confidence in our container-swap service and reach more people.
Happy New Year from Collective Resource Compost Cooperative!
As the sun sets on 2023, we’re pausing to reflect on a few causes for celebration from this past year.
Here We Grow Again: Expanded Composting Options
We’re delighted to announce that beginning November 1st, we’ll be hauling all of your food scraps to The Green Era Campus. There is so much good news about this change, but let’s start with this: Anything that is certified compostable, whether it is CMA or BPI, is accepted at this facility. If compostable is written on it, we can collect it.
Maximizing
We’re usually all about reducing, reusing and recycling over here. Don’t worry, we haven’t changed our tune. In my own life, I’ve been thinking about how I can get more use out of what I have. I’m trying to be creative in how I apply the concept of maximizing.
Why We Need You to Become an Owner
We’ve adopted bylaws, elected officers and authorized the issuance of common stock. Now our work begins to explain to the community why Collective Resource Compost Cooperative needs more owners. The more consumer-owners there are, the better it is. The money you pay for your composting service helps mitigate climate change and supports a values-driven, democratic business model that addresses inequality, keeps wealth in the local economy and builds community around sustainability.
Smoke Signals: Messages from the Future?
I think that here in Chicagoland, we feel like we’re protected from the worst effects of climate change. Though Lake Michigan sometimes feels like an ocean, it isn’t one and we’re not as vulnerable to sea level rise as cities like Miami and New York.
The smoke from the Canadian wildfires has been a wake-up call. It’s got me thinking about borders and how they’re man-made. We can draw lines on the land and even divide up the air space, but the air itself is not aware of these.
Collective Resource Compost Cooperative: Own the Solution
Collective Resource Compost Cooperative. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? On July 1st, 2023, we became a hybrid co-op that includes three levels of ownership: Worker-Member, Consumer-Member and Supporter-Owner.
Sourcing Compostable Disposable Products
We highly encourage our zero-waste event customers to use reusable plates, cups, and utensils whenever possible. However, if you choose to purchase disposable products when using our services, we ask that you select compostable products. Following is a guide to help you find the compostable disposables that are right for your event.
Composting at Condo, Co-op and Apartment Buildings
Many of you originally learned about our service when we were out tabling somewhere, like an eco-fair or farmers market, so you know that one of the first questions we ask is, “What kind of building do you live in? Single-family home? Multi-unit building?” And without fail, the people who live in apartment or condo/co-op buildings answer in a really dejected tone as though there’s no hope for them to ever be able to compost. I’m here to tell you that there is hope, people! In fact, our founder Erlene Howard created this service because she lived in a condo building and wanted to be able to divert her food scraps.