If we get to your house and don’t see your bucket, we’ll leave you a spare and plan to pick them both up on your next pickup day. Just snap the lid on the old one and don’t worry if it gets gross in the meantime.
Yes! We’re very proud to be able to “close the loop” by bringing back some of the very same compost you’ve helped create. Members of our residential pickup service* will receive a share of about 1 cubic foot of finished compost twice per year, spring and fall. If you don’t want your share, we’ll donate it to a local community garden, farm, or non-profit.
* Drop-off members, unfortunately, do not receive a compost share. Our drop-off program was designed for affordability and operates on a razor-thin margin, so the math just doesn’t work to provide finished compost. We do occasionally do promotional giveaways of finished compost, and we always invite our drop-off members to attend those events.
When you sign up, you’ll receive a welcome email announcing your first pickup day. You can check your service schedule anytime through your member dashboard, and we also send out reminder emails the evening before each pickup.
We do our best to do all our pickups between 9am and 5pm, but sometimes we’re out later into evening. We can’t give any more scheduling details than that, because the routes are constantly changing due to growing membership, variable truck capacities, and staff availability. When summer highs approach 100 degrees, we also give our drivers the option to start up to two hours early if they prefer.
On your pickup days, you can log into your dashboard to see your predicted service time. Keep in mind that this is just an estimate, and routes are subject to change at any time.
To update your payment method, just log in to your dashboard, go to “Account & Billing” then “Payment Method”.
We currently serve 99% of Albuquerque and Los Ranchos, with some very limited exceptions on the outskirts.
We also offer biweekly service to all of Corrales, most of Rio Rancho, and a slow-growing portion of Bernalillo. Weekly service in those areas is available on a case-by-case basis.
Finally, in late 2021 we launched in the South Valley, where service is currently on a case-by-case basis but includes most addresses north of Rio Bravo.
As we build density, the restrictions above will be lifted and the open spaces filled in, but it’s unlikely we’ll make further expansions beyond those areas.
After we collect your full bucket (swapping it for a squeaky clean one, of course), we pre-screen your food scraps for contamination then dump it into a large roll cart along with our other members’ scraps. Our commercial crew hauls these larger carts to the compost facility, where they are screened again before being mixed with other materials to start the composting process.
Your bucket is washed by hand with compost-friendly cleaning products and returned to circulation.
It depends. An unrefrigerated bucket of food will definitely start to smell eventually, especially during a hot New Mexico summer, but we’ll do our best to give you tips to help keep the smells under control. And while your bucket might smell from time to time, your regular trash can will smell much better without the food waste. To our knowledge, we’ve only ever lost three members to the gross factor.
If you lose or break your bucket, we’ll add a $10 replacement fee to your next invoice. We’ll waive this fee if your bucket was stolen or broke due to ordinary wear and tear.
We get it. Our service isn’t as cheap as many people wish. In time, we hope we can offer more affordable options, but our current prices reflect what is necessary to pay your drivers a living wage, provide a high quality of service, and keep our doors open. Read more about why our prices are what they are, as well as current and future options to help lower your costs, on our Affordability page.
Absolutely! Home composting can be a lot of fun, improves the soil in your own garden, and is a great way to learn about the soil food web. But it isn’t right for every home, it requires both knowledge and time, and it can be a bit tricky here in our high desert climate. If you want to learn more about composting at home, the Bernalillo County Master Composters provide wonderful training and resources. But if you just want to keep your food scraps out of the landfill, and need someone else to do the dirty work, that’s exactly what we’re here for.
Yes! We have several commercial service options, and can also put together a custom quote tailored to your needs. We’ll be expanding our commercial services in 2023.