Over the past few weeks, word has gotten out that Little Green Bucket is at risk of going out of business as early as November 15th, 2024. I’m writing this post to share the backstory, the challenges and opportunities ahead, and my hopes for the future of Little Green Bucket.
The situation
Over our 6 years in business, the food waste we collect from over 1000 Albuquerque homes has taken a variety of routes from the curb to the compost pile. But since we started our commercial program in early 2023, we’ve stuck to one model: about 10 times per week, we drive our box truck to the compost yard, where we spend about an hour each trip manually dumping and washing 18 trash carts.
Unfortunately, the 3rd party facility recently informed us that they will no longer allow us to do this mission-critical work on their site. They’ll still take the material, but we have to bring it in larger containers (like dumpsters or a trash truck), so we can get in and out quickly.
What does this mean for us? Basically, we need to pivot, quickly. We need a new site to dump our trash carts into a larger container, and also wash out those trash carts before they are returned to customers. Alternatively, or additionally, we need to find additional places to take some or all of the 25-35 cubic yards of food waste we collect every week. In the long run, this situation might force us to start our own composting facility.
The bad news
The bad news is that this change is an enormous operational challenge for us, particularly on short notice. Among the obstacles:
- Our current headquarters is in a quiet neighborhood, right between a family run restaurant and a retiree with a lovely garden. We can’t process 15+ tons of food waste and wash 180 trash cans in our parking lot every week.
- Setting up a transfer site, even a temporary one, is complicated and expensive, especially given our need for on-site washing and the approaching challenges of winter weather.
- If we setup a transfer site we still have to get the material to the compost yard, and food waste is really heavy. We can’t haul it efficiently ourselves without investing in expensive equipment upgrades and possibly a CDL driver.
- Third party haulers can manage the weight easily enough, but few are equipped with leak-proof containers.
- Options for alternate facilities are extremely limited.
The good news
It’s not all doom and gloom. If we can weather this storm, our future is still bright. We’ve already had friends appearing out of the woodwork with ideas and resources to help us, although nothing definitive or permanent has fallen into place yet. We are very grateful to have over 1000 local members who love our business and support our mission, and we’re hopeful that our members and the wider Albuquerque community will help us manifest solutions to this crisis.
What’s more, many of the changes that this crisis will force were already on our wishlist. We never wanted to be dumping trash carts off the back of a box truck in the first place, and this moment gives us a tremendous opportunity to redesign our systems and improve our operational efficiency, our quality of service, and our employee working conditions. The only reason the current moment is more crisis than opportunity is because it’s all happening too fast and we don’t yet know if we can pivot in time.
The path forward, part 1: stopgaps
Surviving this winter will be our greatest challenge. A few things that could help:
- Temporary outdoor work space to host several rolloff dumpsters and/or shipping containers & accommodate our truck and crew for 1-3 hours every weekday
- Farmers or landowners interested in receiving loads of food waste for on-site composting. (Details TBD, but we can provide labor, expertise, and regulatory compliance).
- A leak-proof dump truck or dump trailer for short term loan, lease or purchase.
- 500 sq ft of outdoor storage to hold full trash cans during snow interruptions.
The path forward, part 2: long term dreams
If we make it through the winter, we’ll be dreaming big again, and the most exciting and daunting components of that dream are these two huge needs:
- We’ll need a new home for Little Green Bucket (ideally zoned for agriculture or manufacturing)
- 0.5-2 acres with 2500-5000 sqft of warehouse on a 1-3 year lease
- or 2-5 acres, with or without structures, on a 3-5 year lease
- or 5-20 acres with a gentle path to ownership (lease-to-own or seller financing).
- We’ll need capital to turn that new home into a new compost facility or transfer site
- This could take many forms. Investments, loans, prepaid memberships, crowdfunding, grants, and/or matching pledges. It’s too early to talk specifics, and we need to survive the winter first, but we’re putting the word out now in hopes of generating funding ideas from the community.
Will we make it?
I really don’t know.
I’m immensely proud of the business we’ve built over the past six years. What started in my carport with 36 buckets and a pickup truck has grown into a thriving small business with 10 employees slinging hundreds of buckets and thousands of pounds of food waste every day. I’m honored and so very grateful to lead a team that is majority LGBTQ and majority gender non-conforming, and who have found in my silly little compost company a place to do meaningful green collar work while living out the fullest expression of themselves. And I’m endlessly amazed by how much our community seems to love us, too.
But it’s been hard, as well. The past two years have been downright awful. Crisis after crisis from every direction — mostly from directions we’d never even considered. So much graffiti and petty theft. So many catastrophic vehicle failures. So much time and so many resources spent just trying to respond to changes imposed on us by outsiders.
For two years I’ve been wondering when things would settle down enough that we could step back and refocus on the big picture… and now we’ve been blindsided by the biggest disruption of all.
So will we make it? I don’t know. We probably won’t go under on November 15th… we have enough stopgaps in the works that something will pan out and buy us more time. But will it be enough time to find (and fund) permanent solutions? We’ll know soon enough.