10 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Started A Compost Business 

If you are cheap AND handy with building things, build your own screener. Make it a drum / tumble design and run if from a tractor or other vehicle. You can add its own power supply later. The drum design makes it a continuous flow and super cheap, as all you need is hardware cloth / screens, metal rings and basic frame and some cheap wheels and belts. I dont have a business, but Im still building a tumbler right now for my little homestead to save myself a lot of labor

Green on green crime.....so true. You can never do enough... Just always remind them that if they are not planning on shoving a tree up their but and falling into a hole head first to be that plants new compost then neither are they.

Thank you for your video from Australia.

GREAT content here. I'm a backyard suburban gardener and recently got slightly more serious about my composting - I now have a 4-bay pallet system, which has probably 4-6 yards capacity, in different stages. The bulk of it is leaves and grass clippings, but I throw all vegetable food waste, clean cardboard, shredded paper, and basically anything else I can think of in there too. I have a very sensitive nose, and when the compost is hot and smells right, it's magic, IMO. My kids think I have serious problems. But that compost smell fills me with joy. Maybe I do have serious problems. The thought of making a business out of it has crossed my mind. I don't think it will happen, but these points are great to ruminate on, either way.

Thank you for this solid content. I really dig the small business and commercial composting insights. What you share about product and service differentiation was particularly useful and important. Knowing ones target audience/ market is always key to growth and success, and it’s clear how you are doing that and it’s helpful hearing you talk through that. Much respect.

It's good that you have supportive friends and family.

lol sneaky bad guys, I do love your content :) btw Environmental tech here lol

Thanks so much for this information! Im hoping to start up an ASP operation in the midwest and this is very very useful!

" I do not edit my videos" 🥰 Great honest insight for new comers. Thank you for sharing.

Thx for your thorough honesty!! 💯💯💯

Hi Justin, I just subscribed to your channel. I'm never going to do more than make compost for my own garden. I bought a Can-O-Worms in 2009 and my garden is happy. But I appreciate what you are doing and I hope your channel takes off. I started mine back in September of 2020 and it's been a slow go. Good luck to you 👍

Excellent advice. Many of the 10 things apply to almost any type of business. There are always problems and Murphy's Law. I feel that your business has reached a high level. I could envision you and your partners selling the entire operation for a pretty penny if you wanted to.

Man we definitely have different friends and family!!

Not sure if you already do, but Trader Joe’s has a “neighborhood shares” program, where either partially spoiled or bruised produce is donated to local businesses. That should be a consistent flow of food waste

Great content! Well resented. Thank you.

Thanks bro

Thanks for the insight. I have become interested in vermicomposting and as I have been researching the topic, I have been observing how one's capacity to screen the material is a huge differentiator in the scale one can achieve.

If some one doesn't like what you are doing, you must be doing something right!

Thank you so much for the information here. We are thinking about starting a composting operation on some land my family owns in East Texas not too far from some major cities and have been trying to work on the economic model for it. This video along with others definitely helps me make sure I take things into consideration that I hadn't before. One question I have is whether or not you have looked at composting via Johnson-Su bioreactors. They seem to be a mostly "build and forget" type of model which would have a lot lower production costs for high quality compost.

Excellent advice! Thanks for taking the time to post your experience. Any suggestions on where to look for used screeners? We are a small operation and not looking to grow much beyond what we are but would love to have a better product and save time doing it. Thanks!

Good to know..

Very helpful! Did you have to get a permit to pick up food waste scraps from homes and/or businesses? Do you have specific bins (i.e. yard waste bin) that you give the homeowners that work with your trucks? Do your homeowner customers follow the instructions or do they dump plastic and other non-compostable things in your bins?

To your point about commercial businesses that adopt your service based on principle but really look at your service as another expense is a great point.....it all boils down to money.....on the other hand the challenge is the opportunity and while i dont have the full answer, i have a glimpse of a vision that is mostly a pipe dream, but the point is we as a society have to complete the circuit.what i mean is our food supply and food growing system is all wrong. We need to move away from big factory farms that dump chemical fertilzers to grow food and move back to using a system that relies on the food scraps going back to the farmers to feed the soil or the livestock that the resterraunt needs to feed its customers. Right now the food is flown in & trucked in from far away, the chef isnt required to send it back because the farmer doesnt operate that way. In our closed loop the chef supplies the farmer with the fertilizer, instead of a big chemical company. The chef literally has no incentive to send his scrap to you in order to make the fertilizer aka compost that the farmer need to raise the produce. If it is possible to create local food supplies that operate in a cyclical way and cut the reliance on sysco and northern haserot, farmers would raise the meat , fruit, and veggies locally, sell to the local restaurant or market to feed the local population, and those people would send their waste to you, and you compost the waste to send back to the farmers as "fertilizer" to replace the nutrients in the soil that grew the food the first time..... To put a fine point on it, the use of chemical fertilizer brought in fromoutside the local ecosystem is the outlier that is disrupting our loop from re connecting itself

Would you have a suggestion for a grinder that would handle about a gallon kitchen waste at a time? I "play" with vermicomposting and would like to break down the organic material before mixing it. Thank You for your videos.

great video. Did you say no yard waste? What are your browns?

My question is more on the marketing side. How did you get your name out there for the residents? What tips and tricks do you use to get them to join your services.

Hey thanks for the great tips. I did notice you say you're compost is manure free. Im wondering what are the drawbacks to composted manure? I have a massive amount of manure that I compost and want to start selling but now I'm starting to think that may not be a good idea?

Thank you! and you do edit lol

I have a confusion here. Should not manure based compost be considered quality one? As manure is one of the main compost ingredients

Paperwork? You mean Gov't regulations.

30 cal for vegan greenie freaks. They compost too.

How big a of space would I need to start my own business?

Great insight! Thank you. Do you have to let environmentalists in? Is it a regulation ? Can you just lock the door ?

one thing i hate about videos like this is is not seeing examples of the business and seeing a dude just talk about it. this isnt radio, use video clips, i know what you look like, your info is very informative ,but a video plateform should show more of an example?

"my biggest struggle is labor" = capitalism has made it that if I don't exploit labor to the bone another competitor will and put me out of business.