Food Waste Composting Service

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How it works

Food waste collection services for your home, business or event in Whakatū Nelson

Our friendly team collects your bucket right from your doorstep every week.
You put out your full bucket. We swap it for a fresh, clean one.

Heaps of benefits

  • We upcycle your kitchen waste into high quality, Earth replenishing, living compost
  • Essential service, 52 weeks a year
  • Share your bucket (and cost) with your neighbours or friends
  • Discounts on finished compost

Education & non-profit pricing

Community groups, schools, charities, social enterprises. We see you, love you and salute you!

If this is you, please let us know and it will be our pleasure to apply a 20% discount to your plan

High or variable volume? 

If you produce more than 20L per week or your volume varies, let us know and we can create a custom plan that works best for you.

Person with a pink shirt and person with a blue shirt standing next to a wheelbarrow filled with dirt or rocks.

100+
Happy customers

A cartoon water truck with a bicycle and a skateboard nearby, all on a colorful background.

180+
Buckets Collected Weekly

A white paper bag with a plant or leaf illustration on it, sitting on a surface.

2,000+ tonnes
Composted & counting…

A green recycling box with rocks and rocks with moss around it.

400+ tonnes
Compost produced annually

What our customers say

  • Community Compost is a great initiative and they provide a wonderful service. I'm very grateful as I haven't been composting since I moved house and it wasn't feeling right. I hope you thrive and get more and more people requesting your service.

    – Sukhita

  • It feels good to know our waste is being responsibly disposed of. Thanks Ben for creating an efficient and cheap service that enables me to do my part in creating a beautiful world.

    – Hester

  • Champion service! And essential! We are so grateful for the work that Community Compost does and only hope they get the support they need to truly revolutionise the way Nelson deals with its green waste. Ka rawe!

    – Missy

  • When I read about Community compost, signed up and it's just brilliant. Bucket collected every week, replaced with a clean bucket, absolutely no effort. Highly recommend this service.

    – Pat

  • This service has saved us so much time and energy and it's so great to do our bit towards helping the environment

    – Christine

  • If you get to know the people behind Community Compost you meet their genuine dedication to contribute to a change in human consumption behaviours. Their own heart and soul is in this business and a passionate wish to raise awareness through offering alternative, ethical solutions to a waste culture.

    – Sofia

We collect

  • All food - including meat, seafood, dairy and eggs
  • Coffee grounds & tea leaves
  • Fallen leaves
  • Untreated sawdust
  • Flowers
  • Pot plants
  • Weeds and grass cuttings
  • Bokashi
  • Ash

We don’t collect

  • Paper or cardboard
  • Any packaging, even compostable types
  • Plastic
  • Foil and paper Wrappers
  • Rubber bands
  • Unshredded paper
  • Unshredded cardboard
  • Pet / animal waste and bedding
  • Tampons, towels and nappies
  • Wet wipes
  • Clothing, plasters
  • Wood, stones, glass or metal
  • Paint, solvents or chemicals
  • Detergents and Cleaning Products

FAQ

  • We collect every Wednesday and Thursday depending on your address.

    between 9am and 3pm.

    We can make one-off collections, anytime, by arrangement in advance.

  • Our service is perfect for you if you…

    ✔ Love and respect our environment and you want to do your part.

    ✔ Don't have space for a compost bin at your house, or produce too much food waste to manage.

    ✔ Don't have time to empty and clean your bucket, turn your heap, or dig it into your garden.

    ✔ Don’t want to manage the flies, ants, the smell, the rats.

    ✔ Want to support a local grassroots collective develop solutions that serve our planet

    • Businesses are issued monthly invoices, with weekly collections itemised, sent at the beginning of the month. Contact us

    • Households and small business Subscribe here

    • The longer you subscribe for, the bigger your discount.

    • You can cancel anytime.

  • Going away for a while? You can request a pause anytime, just send us an email to let us know

    You can also cancel the service at any time and we will collect the last bucket.

  • We are pretty nerdy about creating the most diverse living compost possible.

    Our composting methods are temperature monitored, fully aerobic and produce minimal emissions.

    We manage our composting process with utmost care and attention, supporting the life within.

    Once the process is finished we either sell the compost to help keep us sustainable or donate it to our volunteers, community gardens or schools.

    If you’d like to see our process in action, come down to one of our weekly Compost Club events at the Brook Waimarāma Community Gardens.

    If you are an Organisation and would like to benefit from our compost, please get in touch.

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