Greener Bay Compost name-dropped by Green Bay Sustainability Commission as potential Green Bay City Partner for Food Waste Prevention Program

Greener Bay Compost was name-dropped during the City of Green Bay‘s April 19th, 2022 Common Council meeting by the Green Bay Sustainability Commission‘s Mark Walter as a potential partner for the City with regard to a proposed city-wide Food Waste Prevention Program.

This meeting may be viewed in full by clicking https://youtu.be/rheFqAxGHps, or by watching the video embedded below:

If you would like to watch the part of the meeting where Mark Walter discusses the City’s Waste Reduction goals, you can do so on YouTube at 42 minutes into the video (with the segment running until 46:10 in) by clicking https://youtu.be/rheFqAxGHps?t=2520, or by watching the video embedded below:

If you’d like to skip ahead to the part where Mark Walter discusses Greener Bay Compost specifically, as well as some other potential partners, you can do so on YouTube at 45 minutes and 19 seconds into the video by clicking https://youtu.be/rheFqAxGHps?t=2719, or by watching the video embedded below:

IMPORTANT: Our Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials List has been Updated

We have just updated our list of Acceptable & Not Acceptable Materials for Inclusion in Our Compost Buckets, which can be viewed on this website at https://www.gbcompost.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Greener-Bay-Compost-Acceptable-and-Not-Acceptable-Materials-List.pdf, or through our link at the bottom of our homepage.

The changes that have been made can be summarized as follows:

We now accept, without reservation, any and all products labeled as BPI-Certified Compostable. To find items certified as such, or to find out of items you buy or are considering purchasing are certified as such, please visit https://bpiworld.org/Find-Certified-Products.

We have updated our wording on Acceptable ashes to clearly state that not only are ashes made from untreated, natural wood Acceptable, but that those made from the type of plain/matte paper and cardboard we have always accepted are Acceptable as well.

We have updated our wording with regard to coffee grounds to indicate that we accept ALL coffee grounds, whether used/spent or not.

We have updated our list to clearly state that we not only accept egg shells, but whole eggs as well (whether raw or cooked/hardboiled).

We have updated our wording with regard to used/spent potting soil to reflect that we would like any rocks/stones in the soil (typically found in the bottom of it) removed from it prior to it being added to our buckets, as well as added rocks/stones to the Not Acceptable side of our list.

We have updated our wording with regard to pumpkins to request that tea lights be removed from pumpkins (Jack o’ Lanterns) prior to them being provided to us.

We have officially added the following materials to the Acceptable side of our list, although we have already been accepting them for quite some time now:

• Fish skins
• Seeds
• Pits (such as from avocados)
• Jack o’ Lanterns
• Planer shavings made from untreated, natural wood
• Scobies (such as from kombucha production)
• Shrimp shells

We have added bamboo brush handles to the hard wood category of materials we do not accept.

We have updated our wording with regard to large volumes of liquid being Not Acceptable to clarify that the liquid that naturally leaks out of decaying food (such as watermelon, strawberries, lettuce leaves, etc.) is perfectly fine, as it is expected, but that large volumes of other liquids (as in, those artificially-added to our buckets) are still Not Acceptable.

We have added sourdough starter to the Not Acceptable side of our list as, after having advised a few subscribers it was okay to include it in their buckets and after having received it on several occasions in the past several months, we have come to the conclusion that the negatives of accepting this particularly sticky material far outweigh the benefits, due to how difficult it makes it for us to sort through buckets containing it.

Finally, we have added wine/bottle corks to the Not Acceptable side of our list as, despite our best efforts in the past several months to compost the corks, the corks have proven themselves to be non-compostable via the composting process we use.

Please note that with regard to the new additions to the Not Acceptable side of our list, most notably bamboo brush handles, rocks/stones, sourdough starter and wine/bottle corks, we will not be penalizing anyone for the inclusion of these materials in any buckets we pick up between now and 4/30/22.

That said, if any of these materials are found in buckets picked up on 5/1/22 or later, we will be applying either our normal half-pound penalty per individually identifiable Not Acceptable material we find, or, as is often the case when dealing with rocks/stones or large volumes of liquid, deducting the actual weight of the Not Acceptable material, whichever is greater, from the weight of the related bucket contents, per our Loyalty and Waste Reduction Rewards Program.

If you have any questions or concerns about any of these updates/changes to our list of Acceptable & Not Acceptable Materials, please let us know by using any of the contact methods available at www.GBCompost.com/Contact.

IMPORTANT: Our Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials List has been Updated

We just updated our list of Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials, a copy of which can be viewed/downloaded at https://www.gbcompost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Greener-Bay-Compost-Acceptable-and-Not-Acceptable-Materials-List.pdf, to reflect that we will no longer be accepting machine-shredded paper or cardboard, without expressed, written permission, going forward.

Please note: Plain/matte paper or cardboard that is hand-torn, cut with a box cutter, etc. into something like half or fourths will still be acceptable, as it always has been (but still, no receipts, please, as these are made with toxic “thermal paper,” not plain/matte paper).

The reason for this change is that in the past two weeks, we have received two buckets from subscribers that contained shredded paper (specifically, shredded junk mail/envelopes) that was contaminated with a combination of shiny/glossy paper, foil, and plastic envelope window bits.

This resulted in us needing to dispose of approximately one-eighth to one-tenth of the contents of each of these buckets in the garbage (and could potentially have resulted in us needing to trash the entire bucket contents, had the contamination affected the entire bucket), being that shiny/glossy paper and cardboard, metals such as foil, and plastic of all kinds are on the Not Acceptable side of our list of Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials (as they are made with toxic, petroleum-based chemicals, do not biodegrade, or are not safely compostable in general).

As we’re sure you can imagine, this made us very sad, as we hate to see anything that could potentially be composted thrown in the trash, especially the wood shavings at the bottom of our buckets and the compostable liners we line all of our buckets with.

That being the case, to prevent further contamination of the rest of the materials in our buckets going forward, to ensure the clean, high-quality nature of the finished compost we make, and to remain as environmentally-friendly as possible, it is necessary for us to ban machine-shredded paper and cardboard from inclusion in future Greener Bay Compost buckets.

Please note: We may make exceptions to this policy on a case-by-case basis, assuming a subscriber requests such an exception from us, and is granted one, in writing, prior to adding machine-shredded paper or cardboard to their buckets. An example of a case where we may grant such an exception would be in the event that a subscriber has non-shiny/glossy gift basket shreds they’d like to compost and which clearly pose no contamination risk to our buckets.

Also, please note: To enforce this new policy, we will be effectuating a policy going forward for any buckets we pick up from subscribers after 1/9/2022 that will see our subscribers receive zero weight-based credit for their bucket contents (as per our Loyalty and Waste Reduction Rewards Program), regardless of the weight of their bucket or the apparent percentage of their bucket contents made up of machine-shredded paper or cardboard, if any machine-shredded paper or cardboard is found inside their buckets (unless, of course, the subscriber has been granted the aforementioned written permission to include such shredded material in their bucket(s)).

If you have any questions or concerns about this change to our list of Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials or our new weight-deduction policy relative to machine-shredded paper or cardboard received after 1/9/2022, please let us know. We are always here to help!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Changes to our prices coming effective January 1st, 2022

As you may be aware, if you’ve been to GBCompost.com lately and seen our subscriber count, been keeping an eye on our Instagram account or Facebook page, or seen us on the news recently, we have experienced explosive growth as a company, especially in the last month or so (and of course, we have our subscribers to thank, in large part, for this).

In the last month alone, we have signed up about thirty new subscribers, and we have also held our first Annual Pumpkin Drive, which saw us visit over 90 different households and save several tons of pumpkins, gourds, straw bales, and corn stalks from getting tossed in the trash. Furthermore, since we started taking on subscribers on 8/4/2021, we and our subscribers have kept well over two tons of organic waste out of landfill!

To summarize: Together, we are making a very real, positive, and sizable impact on our community! And we all deserve a round of applause for this.

That said, as has been the case with many other small and local businesses in the last year, we have also seen explosive growth in our costs to operate our business, most notably in the area of our food safe, five gallon buckets and the gasoline required for us to do our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups (as well as, to a lesser extent, with regards to our bucket lids, the stickers for our buckets and lids, the compostable liners we put in every bucket, and even our utilities, such as the water we need to clean our buckets each week).

Due to the massive growth of our subscriber base, which has grown from 16 to 72 in less than four months, we have also necessarily upgraded the vehicle we use to perform our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups from a vehicle that can fit a maximum of 19 buckets at one time to one that can fit over 60.

These concerns, combined with feedback we have received from our subscribers over the past several months, consideration of the market we operate in, and an analysis of our profitability, have led us to conclude that we have been undercharging for our services and that for us to not only stay in business but to continue growing and expanding, we will need to increase prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Service plans.

That said, we are sensitive to the fact that we are in the middle of the Holiday Season right now, and so being that we are not wanting to spring any price increases on our subscribers or our Greater Green Bay community right before Christmas, our planned price increases will not become effective until January 1st, 2022 at Midnight.

Currently, our prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Services are as follows:

• Every-Other-Week, Month-to-Month Plan: $10/month
• Every-Other-Week, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $54/six months
• Weekly, Month-to-Month Plan: $20/month
• Weekly, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $108/six months
• Add-A-Bucket Option (for Weekly plan subscribers only): $10/month
• Special, One-Time Pickup (for Every-Other-Week subscribers only): $5 one-time payment

Effective 1/1/2022, our prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Services will be as follows:

• Every-Other-Week, Month-to-Month Plan: $15/month
• Every-Other-Week, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $81/six months
• Weekly, Month-to-Month Plan: $30/month
• Weekly, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $162/six months
• Add-A-Bucket Option (for Weekly plan subscribers only): $15/month
• Special, One-Time Pickup (for Every-Other-Week subscribers only): $7.50 one-time payment

PLEASE NOTE: If you’re already on one of our Six-Months-Paid-in-Full plans, you are locked/”grandfathered” in to your current plan at the price you originally paid for it, at least until it renews at the end of your six-month subscription period, whenever that may be, at which point you will be automatically renewed at the new price for your plan detailed above (unless you cancel or otherwise change your plan with us before then).

If you’re on one of our Month-to-Month plans, you will not experience a price increase until your monthly renewal date in the month of January, 2022, whenever that may be.

These price increases will address a few issues we’ve determined to be hurting our profitability and putting us at risk of going out of business:

1. They will ensure that we are adequately compensated for every trip we make to our subscribers’ homes, regardless of how many Sundays/Pickup days occur in any given month
2. They will better reflect the value of our services and the actual work that goes into doing what we do (not just the Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups, but everything else in between that makes our business work as well)
3. They will better reflect the fact that we are the only Curbside Compost Pickup Service in the Green Bay metropolitan area (with the next closest being in Stevens Point, Madison, or Milwaukee)
4. They will take into account the Rewards Programs we offer our subscribers (which we were not offering at the time we set our current prices, and which is something most companies like ours do not offer)
5. They will provide us the ability to invest in the things we need to invest in to grow, such as, for example, more or bigger compost sites (or facilities), employees/contractors, etc.
6. They will keep our prices in line/competitive with what similar companies, such as Waste Not in Chicago, Illinois, charge for their services (with these other companies, in many cases, charging quite a bit more than we do, even accounting for our new, 2022 pricing)

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email at , by phone at 920-819-0446, or through our Contact form located at www.GBCompost.com/Contact. We are always here to help and look forward to continuing to serve you in the months (and hopefully years) ahead!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials List has been Updated

As of 11/28/2021, our Acceptable and Not Acceptable Materials List has been updated.

To view, download, or print a PDF copy of the List, click here: https://www.gbcompost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Greener-Bay-Compost-Acceptable-and-Not-Acceptable-Materials-List.pdf

To view, download, or print a JPEG copy of the List, click here: https://www.gbcompost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Greener-Bay-Compost-Acceptable-and-Not-Acceptable-Materials-List-scaled.jpg

If you have any questions or concerns about the changes made to this List, or anything else, for that matter, please do not hesitate to email us at , call us at 920-819-0446, or contact us through our Contact form located at GBCompost.com/Contact.
 

Greener Bay Compost featured LIVE on Local 5 News!

On Friday, November 26th, 2021 (the day after Thanksgiving), Greener Bay Compost founder, Cory Groshek, appeared LIVE on Local 5 (WFRV) News’s “Local 5 Live” morning show, which aired from 9 AM to 10 AM CST. The segment focused on what Greener Bay Compost is all about, which is recycling food and other organic waste into nutrient-dense compost for gardens.

Read the story on WeAreGreenBay.com here: https://www.gbcompost.com/Local-5-2021-11-26-Article-on-WeAreGreenBaycom

Watch the story on YouTube here: https://www.gbcompost.com/Local-5-2021-11-26-Video-on-YouTube

Greener Bay Compost featured on Fox11 news!

Today, Greener Bay Compost was featured on Fox11 news, in a story by Gabriella Premus, which focused heavily on Greener Bay Compost’s first Annual Pumpkin Drive, which saw the company visit over 90 different households and save several tons of pumpkins, gourds, straw bales, and corn stalks from ending up in landfill. ENJOY!

Read the story on Fox11Online.com here: https://www.gbcompost.com/Fox11-2021-10-22-Article-on-Fox11Onlinecom

ANNOUNCEMENT: We are changing our Bucket Swap/Compost Pickup time!

Going forward, our Bucket Swap/Compost Pickup days will remain on Sundays, however, our pickup routes will now begin at 8 AM, rather than 10 AM.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW A LIST OF ALL OF OUR UPCOMING BUCKET SWAPS/COMPOST PICKUPS

Additionally, we will now be sending out all of our Bucket Swap/Compost Pickup email reminders to anyone who has signed up for them on the Saturdays prior to the Swaps/Pickups being done, rather than on the morning of them.

Please note: If you haven’t already signed up for our email reminder list and would like to do so, you may do so through any of the Events pages listed at GBCompost.com/Events, where you will find a sign-up form you can enter your email address into, or you can simply email us at GBCompost.com/Contact or and let us know you’d like to sign up and we will manually add you.

The reason for the above change is that we’ve concluded, based on our experience serving 37 subscribers (12 of whom were new) yesterday, it will be impossible for us to get all of our scheduled Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups done in one day (prior to sunset) unless we start performing them a few hours earlier.

On that note, please note that, in the future, we may need to make further adjustments to our Bucket Swap/Compost Pickup schedules, depending on the number of subscribers we have, where our subscribers are located, what time of year it is, etc., especially as our business continues to rapidly grow and expand.

While we are currently able to get all of our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups done in one day each week (currently every Sunday), the time may come soon when we will need to split our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups into multiple days (for example, Sundays and Mondays). We anticipate that we will need to do a split schedule like this if we reach somewhere near 100 subscribers (currently, we are at 54).

In conclusion, we’d like to say THANK YOU for your patience with us during this time of explosive growth for Greener Bay Compost, which we surely have you and the rest of our subscribers to thank for! Also, please accept our sincerest apologies if you were in any way inconvenienced by us performing your Bucket Swap/Compost Pickup far later in the day yesterday than usual. Rest assured, we are taking all the necessary steps to ensure that we can continue to provide excellent service to you and all of our subscribers.

If you have any questions or concerns about the above-mentioned changes, or anything else, for that matter, please do not hesitate to email us back at or contact us through our Contact form located at GBCompost.com/Contact.

Greener Bay Compost featured on NBC26 news!

Today, Greener Bay Compost was featured on NBC26 news, in a story by Jenna Bree, which focused heavily on why our founder, Cory Groshek, started Greener Bay Compost and what the company is all about. The story also features short interviews with one of our good friends, Daniela Beall, the Sustainability Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and one of our subscribers, Marianne Oates! ENJOY!

Read the story on NBC26.com here: https://www.gbcompost.com/nbc26-2021-10-22-article-on-nbc26com

Read the story on Yahoo.com here: https://www.gbcompost.com/nbc26-2021-10-22-article-on-yahoocom

Read the story on UWGB.edu here: https://www.gbcompost.com/nbc26-2021-10-22-article-on-uwgbedu

Watch the story on YouTube here: https://www.gbcompost.com/NBC26-2021-10-22-Video-on-YouTube

Watch the story on Facebook here: https://www.gbcompost.com/NBC26-2021-10-22-Video-on-Facebook

ANNOUNCEMENT: Two new Subscriber Rewards Programs introduced today!

At Greener Bay Compost, we are proud to share with you the following two huge announcements!

Loyalty and Waste Reduction Rewards Program

First, we have officially launched our Loyalty and Waste Reduction Rewards Program, to not only reward subscribers for their loyalty to us, but also for diverting as much of their organic, would-be waste as possible from landfill to our compost piles.

The way this program works is simple:

For every 15 pounds of organic, would-be waste our subscribers place in their compost buckets (not including the weight of our buckets, lids, and BioBag compostable bucket liners), our subscribers will earn one pound of finished compost, which is like “black gold” for gardens of all kinds!

The only catch is that for our subscribers to be eligible to claim this finished compost, they must remain a subscriber of ours for at least six months.

Please note: Signing up for one of our 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plans, in and of itself, does not render a subscriber eligible for finished compost. Only spending at least six full, consecutive months of Curbside Compost Pickup Services from us, with no breaks in service, will render a subscriber eligible for finished compost.

We anticipate having finished compost ready to give out come early Spring of 2022, so if you’re not yet a subscriber of ours and would like to get in on some our amazing finished compost, you will want to make sure you subscribe to one of our Curbside Compost Pickup Plans no later than the end of September or October, 2021, so as to ensure you’ve been a subscriber of ours for long enough to qualify for said compost, prior to Spring planting time!

The same goes for friends, family members, and/or co-workers you may have been trying to convince to also sign up with us. If you’ve been having trouble convincing them to sign up with us based on the benefits of our services to our environment and community alone, now you have a whole new, much more personally beneficial incentive you can tell them about!

Please note: Because we have been weighing our subscribers full buckets since the inception of our business, all existing subscribers of ours will be receiving retroactive credit for the poundage they have already provided to us in weeks past, toward their future finished compost.

To make it easy for our existing subscribers to keep track of how many months of service they’ve had with us, how much organic, would-be waste they’ve included in their bucket, how many pounds of finished compost they’ve earned, and how many pounds of finished compost they’ve claimed, we will be creating personal Rewards Program webpages for each of our subscribers, which they can visit, with no login necessary. Existing subscribers can expect a separate email from us in the days ahead with links to these webpages.

Please note that we understand that not all of our subscribers are gardeners and therefore may have little to no need for the finished compost they may earn from us. As such, any subscribers who earns finished compost will have a several options with regards to what can be done with said compost:

1. They can keep the compost for their own personal use
2. They can receive the compost and then give it away to friends, family members, and/or co-workers, at their sole discretion
3. They can opt to gift the compost back to Greener Bay Compost to be given away as part of a raffle, which all of our subscribers will be eligible, regardless of how many months of service they’ve had with us
4. They can opt to gift the compost to one of several local business partners of Greener Bay Compost (yet to be determined), which could include community gardens, in which case Greener Bay Compost will deliver the compost to the business partner of our subscribers choosing

Referral Rewards Program

Further to the point about telling friends, family members, and/or co-workers about us, we are also proud to announce that, in conjunction with our Loyalty and Waste Reduction Rewards Program, we have launched our Referral Rewards Program, which will see our existing subscribers earn a pound of finished compost for every new subscriber they refer to us who signs up for one of our Month-to-Month Curbside Compost Pickup plans, or a five pounds of finished compost for every new subscriber who signs up for one of our 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Curbside Compost Pickup plans, regardless of how many months of service the referring subscriber has had with us.

To facilitate this Referral Rewards Program, we have added a “Referred By” field to our subscription forms at www.GBCompost.com. To ensure you get credit for referring your friends, family members, and/or co-workers to us, please be sure to emphasize to such individuals the importance of naming you in this field, so we will know who we owe finished compost to.

If for some reason a friend, family member, or co-worker you’ve referred to us neglects to put your name in the “Referred By” field, simply have them Contact Us at www.GBCompost.com/Contact to let us know who referred them, and we will make sure you get credit for the referral.

Please note: The aforementioned, individual Rewards Program webpages we will be creating for our existing subscribers will also contain details on how many others our subscribers have referred to us, how many pounds of finished compost they’ve earned based on their referrals, and how much of this finished compost they’ve claimed.

Having said all of the above, it is important to note that finished compost from Greener Bay Compost is always subject to availability. In other words, it is possible that we will be unable to provide finished compost to our subscribers, even when they’ve earned it and are eligible to claim it, due to a lack of said compost being in existence.

Should finished compost not be available at the time subscribers who are eligible to claim it make a claim to it, such subscribers will retain the right claim said compost at its earliest availability, and we will do our best here at Greener Bay Compost to keep all our subscribers informed as to availability of finished compost via www.GBCompost.com, email, and social media. Furthermore, we will provide said compost to eligible subscribers in the order in which we’ve received claims for said compost.

Should we have finished compost leftover after providing the amount of it we owe to our subscribers who have earned it, we will then endeavor to sell this leftover compost at a tentative price of $1.50 per pound, and anyone who would like to purchase this compost, whether a subscriber of ours or not, will be able to do so through www.GBCompost.com, on a first-come, first-serve basis.

If you have any questions or concerns about either of our new Rewards Programs, please do not hesitate to contact us using any of the contact options available at www.GBCompost.com/Contact or visit www.GBCompost.com/Rewards for more details! And thank you, as always, for helping us make Green Bay a little greener every day!