Residential compost service returns to Santa Cruz with a focus on community.

By Ciara Wanket

One man’s trash is another man’s… fertilizer?

That’s the idea behind a crew of intrepid bikers taking Santa Cruz by storm, hauling buckets of vegetable peels, apple cores, and leftovers up daunting Santa Cruz hills with the goal of making food waste a thing of the past. Instead of being thrown into landfills, these kitchen scraps are going to the Homeless Garden Project, where, with heat and time, they will be transformed into nutrient-rich soil.

Food waste is a huge problem. A third of all food humans produce is wasted every year, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Most food can be composted, yet Santa Cruz does not have a city-run compost program.

Hard Core Compost is here to fill the compost void in Santa Cruz, diverting food waste from landfills to gardens.

Hard Core Compost is the new incarnation of Santa Cruz Community Compost Company, which was owned and operated by Ivy Young for almost five years before she was forced to hang up her helmet after a spate of injuries in November 2018. Addisson Wilks was one of the only riders for Santa Cruz Community Compost Co. when it closed. After almost six months, they started collecting compost again on April 1st with their new company.

Wilks started planning Hard Core Compost with several others at their house only three weeks after service ended. From the beginning, community has been a key ingredient for the new business.

“I was only interested [in creating Hard Core Compost] if others were interested because I didn’t want to do it by myself,” said Wilks. Now, their business has seven co-owners, including several current and former Cabrillo students, who are all equal owners and workers together. “Everyone has equal say and decisions.”

This focus on cooperation and workload distribution is notably different from the last iteration, Santa Cruz Community Compost Co., which only had two regular riders to collect compost from 300 households across Santa Cruz, according to Wilks. The small staff size became even more strained when a spate of accidents kept multiple riders off their bikes.

Young hurt her wrist in an accident, rendering her unable to ride her bike, leaving Wilks and a few part-time riders to manage the service area alone. Soon after, one of the part-time riders was crashed his bike and Wilks was injured in a collision with another cyclist on the same day. Eventually, demand was too great for the injured staff, and the company was forced to stop all service last November.

Wilks is working hard to prevent the kind of accidents that crippled Santa Cruz Community Compost Co. in their new venture.

“I think that a lot of the accidents were happening because people were really rushed and overworked,” said Wilks. “I think being in communication with everyone is really important, and checking in about their workload. Right now no one is working more than twice a week, which is a good way to start for people who haven’t done it before.”

They have also written a safety protocol for the new riders, many of whom have not ridden with the cargo trailers that they use to haul the compost.

Besides sharing the responsibility of collecting compost, the owners of Hard Core Compost work together to create the compost itself. On a small plot of land at the Homeless Garden Project’s Natural Bridges farm, Wilks and others create compost piles, transforming last week’s leftovers into valuable plant food.

The secret to creating the the best compost is to create a “rot cake” pile with layers of hay, food scraps, carbon and soil, according to Wilks. Hard Core Compost creates their piles with the scraps they collect from Santa Cruz households and disposed paper products donated from Food Not Bombs. Many of the owners have studied soil science, including one who is learning about horticulture at Cabrillo, and are using their dirt know-how to create high-quality compost from everyday kitchen waste.

By their second week, Hard Core Compost already had 150 customers. With no competitors and growing public consciousness about sustainability, it is sure to become a Santa Cruz institution.

To have Hard Core Compost collect your kitchen scraps weekly, sign up at www.compost.bike. Rates range from $25/month with a one year subscription to $30/month for a single month.